Chapter Ten.
Romantic Courtship—The Happy Family—A Canoe Picnic—Mustagan—A Prowling Bear—A Woman’s Shot.
When the full details of the battle with the wolves came out, and the fact of the prominent part that Sam had played in the rescue of Mr Ross, his family were at first very much excited at his narrow escape, and then full of congratulations for Sam for his shrewdness and the promptitude with which he acted.
We have as yet said but little about this interesting family, and so we will use some of the time while Mr Ross is recovering from his wounds in giving a few details which we are sure will be most interesting, as some of them partake most decidedly of the romantic.
Mr Ross, like many a Hudson Bay official, was rather late in life in choosing his wife. His busy life in the service, where on each promotion he was removed from one post to another, made it almost impossible to set up a home. When he decided to do so his plan was very romantic. In those remote, lonely regions there are not many white families from which the young gentlemen in the service can select wives. The result is, many of them marry native women, or the daughters of mixed marriages contracted by the older officials. These women make excellent wives and mothers, and, being ambitious to learn, they often become as clever and bright as their white sisters, to many of whom they are superior in personal appearance. Into many a cozy home can the adventurous tourist go, and never would he dream that the stately, refined, cultured woman at the head of the home, honoured by her husband and beloved by her children, if not of pure Indian blood, was at least the daughter or granddaughter of a pure Indian.
Very romantic is the story of Mr Ross’s love adventure, and here it is given for the first time. Long years before this, when Mr Ross was comparatively a young man, he saw in one of the Indian villages a little dark-eyed native girl, who looked to him as beautiful as a poet’s dream. Although she was only ten or twelve years old, and he approaching thirty, he fell desperately in love with her, and said she must yet be his wife. He knew her language, and soon found that the bright and beautiful child was willing some time in the future to be his bride.
So it was arranged that she should be sent to the old land to be educated. Fortunately good Bishop Anderson was returning to England in connection with his work in the Red River Settlement, going by the Hudson Bay Company’s ship. Wenonah was placed in charge of his family on the voyage, and at the journey’s end was sent to a first-class school, called “The Nest.” Here at Mr Ross’s expense she was kept for several years, until she was not only highly educated as a student, but loving, interested ladies taught her, in their kindness, the things essential for a good housekeeper to know.