"Glad to see the other children are fat," said the Doctor.
"They bees eatin' berries all the time," was the mother's answer. Then suddenly the full force of their plight swept all other thoughts out of her mind.
"What's t' good of t' government?" she cried. "Here is we all starvin'. And it's ne'er a crust they gives yer. There bees a sight o' pork an' butter in t' company's store. But it's ne'er a sight of 'im us ever gets. What are them doin'? T' agent he says he can't give Tom no more'n dry flour, an' us can't live on dat."
Then a bent and weary figure shuffled on the scene. It was Tom, the poor husband and father. He had an old and rusty, single-barreled muzzle-loading gun, and he was carrying a dead sea-gull by the tip of one of its wings. Two small boys trudged along after him, their faces old before their time. They stood looking at the Doctor in wonderment.
"Well, Tom, you've had luck!" was Grenfell's greeting. He explains that he meant Tom was very lucky not to have the gun open at the wrong end and discharge its contents into his face!
"It's only a kitty," the hunter answered, sadly. "An' I been sittin' out yonder on the p'int all day." A kitty is a little gull.
"Your gun isn't heavy enough to kill the big gulls, I suppose."
"No, Doctor. I hain't much powder—and ne'er a bit o' shot. I has to load her up most times with a handful o' they round stones. T' hammer don't always set her off, neither. Her springs bees too old, I reckon." He fumbled with the trigger in a way that led Grenfell to ask him to let him hold the gun instead. Tom passed it over, and Grenfell held it till their talk was over.
Tom, who was part Eskimo, was a very poor business man. He had been a slave of the "truck system" by which a man brings his furs or his fish to a trader, exchanges them for supplies, and is always in debt to the storekeeper who takes pains to see that it shall be so.
"Tom," the Doctor told him, "I want to help you. Winter is coming on, and here you are with a handful of flour and a sea-gull, and no proper shelter from the cold. You have too many children to keep. I think you'd better pass over to me for a while your two little boys, 'Billy' and 'Jimmy,' and the little girl. I'll feed them and clothe them and have them taught till they are big enough to come back and help you. All the time they are with me I'll do all I can to help you along. If you have them here—they'll certainly starve. The snow is beginning to cover up the berries already. And that's about all you've got to feed them."