Mrs Bell was not so extremely sanguine, yet having still, in spite of all, unbounded belief in her husband's cleverness, she was by degrees led to consider that this would be a wise step, and in the end agreed to it.
From all I could make out then, and have learned since, Mr Bell had not been either an extravagant or unsteady man. He was indeed a great favourite with every one, and regarded, as indeed he was, as an exceedingly clever person. He simply had not the faculty of money-making, as I have already said.
May and her father emigrated then to Canada in 1892—he declaring, as he parted sorrowfully from his loving wife, that in less than a year he would return and take her out to a bright new home in that land of promise, Manitoba.
May and her father went direct to a village on the Canadian Pacific Railway, west of Winnipeg, called Carberry. It was stated by the railway and steamship advertisements to be situated on "The Beautiful Plains," and that land was to be had for a mere song close to the railroad.
On their arrival they found this was an exaggeration: no land could be obtained except at great price, and although undoubtedly it was a "plain" there, yet they failed to consider the dead level, most uninteresting prairie as "beautiful," and only by going "away back" many miles could they obtain a place within their means.
Then they moved on to Broadview, and liked the look of things there. Really, it is not so good a part as that round Carberry, but there are many clumps of wood, called bluffs, and many blue lakelets, sleughs they call them; there is a more picturesque appearance to its surroundings which no doubt caused them to prefer it. At any rate, Mr Bell at once bought a place, an improved farm, with a decent frame-house upon it—decent, then, for those parts—and they were charmed with everything. It was in the fall when they took possession, and the fall is certainly the most delightful time of year in that part of the world.
At once they wrote home, quite elated, to May's mother, telling her that in the early spring she was to join them, for that the long-looked-for prosperity had come to them.
Yet before the snow had been swept from the prairie the following spring all their enthusiasm had vanished! What with the extreme loneliness, the intense cold, and the dreadfully arduous work, labouring work, which they had to do themselves or starve, they concluded that it would never do to have Mrs Bell there. The climate, the labour, the isolation would never suit them or her, that was plain.
In the midst of this sad disillusionment Mr Bell had an offer for the place and the stock. He jumped at the chance, and the next time they went still farther west, to a place called Banff, in the Rocky Mountains.
They reached there early in the season, and with the enthusiasm with which Mr Bell went at every new scheme, when they had been there only three days he wrote to his wife a letter full of the beauty and the glory of their surroundings; declaring that, at last—no mistake about it this time—they had found what they were in search of.