"I drove to see the Indian girls' Home, and was surprised to find in these wilds such an English stone building, but with the advantage of a nice verandah and green blinds which keep the house cool in summer. The inside of the house I thought very, nice; all the rooms are high and of a good size; a hall, school-room, class-room, and dining-room, and prettily furnished sitting-room for the lady superintendent, a laundry, and good kitchen with a large stove—all these are on the ground floor. Upstairs there is a large dormitory with eight double beds and a smaller one with four beds. These rooms are more airy and give more space to each girl than in many institutions I have seen in England. A small room is set apart for the sick. The lavatory is well fitted up, and everything is clean and neat. The girls do the work partly themselves under the matron, and learn to become servants. The Home has only been fully opened a year, so of course it is still rough round the house, but soon the ground will be laid out. On one side of the house will be the vegetable garden, which the girls will be taught to keep weeded and in order. On the other side of the house the committee intend putting up a gymnasium with money a lady in England has collected: It is a room very much wanted, for, in the winter, with the snow three to four, and sometimes five feet deep, it is impossible to send children out, and if they do not get exercise they would suffer. The room is to be 40 feet by 20, with one end divided off for a meat-house and tool-house; when I say a meat-house I mean a place to keep meat, for they kill cattle and sheep enough for the winter at the beginning of the very cold weather, it freezes hard and keeps well. The gymnasium will, when finished, only cost about 200 dollars. The children look very happy and very little amuses them. I showed them some English village children's games, and left them delighted."
There is always a "but," that is, kind friends are wanted to provide for some of the new girls just come to the Home. If any one would give or collect four shillings a week, that is sufficient to feed a child.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A SAD WINTER.
The winter of 1882 was a sad time. There was great mortality all through the country, and our Homes did not escape.
Our kind friend, Mrs. Fauquier, who, though a constant invalid, had done very much to promote the interests and welfare of our Girls' Home, was called away to the Heavenly Rest on the 4th of November, 1881. During the last few years of her life she had made the Wawanosh Home her special care, her work for Christ. Those girls were always in her thoughts: she it was who devised their uniform dress of blue serge trimmed with scarlet, and got friends in England to supply them; she chose the furniture for the Home and fitted the lady superintendent's rooms so prettily and tastefully. Many were the kind words of counsel that the girls received from her, and it used to be her delight to have them to visit her in the afternoon at the See House.
Only a month had passed after we heard of Mrs. Fauquier's death,—she died in New York,—when the appalling tidings reached us that the Bishop, too, was gone. He had died suddenly in Toronto on December 7th. In the same mail bag which brought the sad news was a letter to me from him, written only an hour or two before he died.
"The sad void," he wrote, "which my dear wife's departure hence has made seems to grow wider and deeper; and it seems difficult to settle down to work as of old. I must try to realize more fully than I have done in the past what a blessing her presence for more than thirty years has been. How true it is that we seldom appreciate our blessings and privileges until they are taken from us."
The church at Sault Ste. Marie was draped with black the following Sunday, and the Indian children of the Homes wore black scarves in token of respect for him who had had their welfare so much at heart.
The next death was that of our carpenter's wife: she had been ailing all through the previous autumn, and died January 2nd.