“And so do I,” said Gertrude. “I knew you were Scotch when I heard you speak. Is it long since you came? Have you been here long? Tell me all about it.”
In the short half-hour before Claude awoke, there was not time to tell all about it, but the young girls told each other enough to awaken a mutual interest.
Miss Gertrude’s mother had died when she was quite young, and she had been committed to the care of an aunt, with whom she had continued to reside for some time, even after the second marriage of her father. She had had a very happy home, and had been educated with great care. Looking back on those days now, she could see no shadow on their calm brightness. She had had her childish troubles, I suppose, but she forgot them all as she went on to describe to Christie her merry life with her young cousins and her friends. Her aunt’s death had broken all those pleasant ties, and she had come to Canada, which must be her home till she was grown up. When she should be of age, she told Christie, and could claim the fortune her mother had left her, she was going home again to live always. She did not like Canada. It did not seem like home to her, though she was living in her father’s house. She longed for the time when she should be her own mistress.
Christie didn’t enjoy the last part of her story very well. She could not help thinking that some of the trials that the young lady hinted at existed only in her own imagination. But she did not say so. She listened to the whole with unabated interest, and in return, told Gertrude the story of her own life. It was given in very few words. She told about her mother’s death, and their coming to Canada, and what happened to them afterwards, till they had been obliged to leave the farm and separate.
It is just possible that the young lady, who sat listening so quietly to these simple details, took to herself the lesson which the story was so well calculated to teach. But Christie had no thought of giving her a lesson. She told of Effie’s wise and patient guidance of their affairs, of the self-denial cheerfully practised by all, of her own eager desire to do her part to help keep the little ones together, of Effie’s slow consent to let her go; all this, far more briefly and quietly than Miss Gertrude had spoken of her childish days that were passed in her aunt’s house. By experience the young lady knew nothing of the real trials of life. She had no rule by which to estimate the suffering which comes from poverty and separation, from solitary and uncongenial toil. Yet, as she sat listening there, she caught a glimpse of something that made her wish she had said less about the troubles that had fallen to her lot. Christie faltered a little when she came to speak of the first months of her stay in town, and of the time when her sister went away.
“I was very, very home-sick. If it hadn’t been for shame, I would have gone at the end of the first month. And when my sister went away in the spring, and left me here, it was almost as bad. It seems like a troubled dream to look back upon it. But it has passed now. It will never be so bad again—never, I am sure.”
“You have got over your home-sickness, then? And are you quite contented now?” she asked, with great interest.
“Yes, I think so. I think it is right to stay. I am very glad to stay, especially now that I am out here, in the country almost. There was a while in the spring that I was afraid I should not be able to stay. But I am better now. I shall soon be quite strong.”
The little boy stirred in his crib, and his eyes opened languidly. Christie was at his side in a moment. To the astonishment of his sister, he suffered himself to be lifted out and dressed without his usual fretful cry.
“How nicely you manage him!” she said, at last. “This used to be a troublesome business to all concerned.”