Priscilla had slaked her thirst for information by setting down in her note-books many facts about the productiveness of the region, and declared that in future if she should meet a boy anxious to become a farmer she would send him to Nova Scotia rather than to the unknown West.
"Ah, but there's no government land for him to take up here, and farms don't go for a song. Every inch is cultivated," rejoined Amy.
Thus at last, when Amy with her mother and her friends were ready to leave Wolfville and Grand Pré and their neighborhood, their minds were filled not only with the history of Acadia and the memories of the past, but with pictures of the present that seemed likely to be lasting.
Mrs. Redmond, moreover, in balancing her accounts,—not a reckoning of money, but of something more precious—counted as the greatest gain the improvement in health made by Priscilla and the improvement in disposition made by Martine.
Priscilla's gain was easily recognized. Even she herself could see it when she looked in the glass, and she was daily growing more and more conscious of it. But Martine's gain,—perhaps she herself did not realize it. Perhaps she had not known in the beginning how much she needed improving. Yet Mrs. Redmond, realizing it, had observed with pleasure that Martine was not nearly as self-willed, was not nearly as ready to ridicule the foibles of others as at the beginning of the trip. Just as the angles of Priscilla's disposition were rounding off to a certain degree, so Martine was much less likely than formerly to fly off in a tangent. Although it could hardly be said that the two girls understood each other perfectly, it was yet the fact that wishes collided far less often than in the past. When Priscilla yielded, she did so with a smaller show of helpless resignation than had been her wont, and Martine no longer thought it clever to laugh at every suggestion made by Priscilla.
As to Amy, her mother saw with pleasure that to her the summer had been one of real refreshment. If she had been absolutely idle she could not have been half as happy as now, with the sense of responsibility that was hers in having the care, or at least the partial care, of Martine and Priscilla; moreover the trip itself, opening as it did to her a country of which previously she had known so little, was in every way a delight to her. It had shown to her a world of history and poetry with which she had not been familiar, even though she had known something about it, and this in itself was worth much to her.
a discovery
"I almost wish," said Amy to her mother, as their train was speeding away from Wolfville, "that we were going direct to Halifax."
"That is a concession," responded Mrs. Redmond, with a smile, "for if you had been less anxious to see Windsor we should have passed on without stopping there. Perhaps even yet it is not too late to change our plans."