“Ah! You don't know what a missionary in herself my wife is! Then, of course, young people never think of the coming events—children and all that you know. We found ourselves one morning at three o'clock, having gone as far as there was any train to take us, waiting in a barn that served as a station for the buckboard to take us on further to our destination. Have you been in Canada yourself? No? Then you have not seen a buckboard. It consists of two planks laid side by side, lengthwise, over four antiquated wheels—usually the remains of a once useful wagon. Upon this you sit as well as you can, and get driven and jolted and bumped about to the appointed goal. I remember that morning so well,” continued the Bishop. “It was very cold, being late in November, and at that hour one feels it so much more—3 a.m., you know. There was one man in charge of the barn; we called him the station-master, though the title sat awkwardly enough upon him. He was a surly fellow. I never met such another. Usually the people out there are agreeable, if slow and stupid.”
“Slow, are they?” said I in surprise.
“Oh, frightfully slow. A Canadian laborer is the slowest person in existence, I really believe. However, this man would not give us any information, except to barely tell us that this buckboard was coming for us shortly. It was pitch dark of course and the barn was lighted by one oil lamp and warmed by a coal stove. The lamp would not burn well, so my wife unstrapped her travelling bag and with a pair of tiny curved nail scissors did her best, with the wick, the man remaining perfectly unmoveable and taciturn all the while. At four o'clock our conveyance arrived, and would you believe it—both the driver and the station master allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could? What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in my district where we were to stay until our own house was ready.”
“How long did that take you?” I was quite interested. This was unlike the other clergymen's conversation I remembered.
“O, a matter of eight hours or so. We had the eggs and bacon—the piece de resistance in every Canadian farmhouse—at about half-past 12, for which we were thankful and—hungry. But now you must excuse me for here come two of the boys. Now, then, Alick, where's your mother? Isn't she coming on deck with James? Run and fetch her and you, George, get one of the chairs ready for her. And get the rugs at the same time Alick, do you hear?”
I excused myself in turn and watched the family preparations with much amusement. Mrs. Saskabasquia came up from her state room with a baby in her arms, and a big fellow he was, followed by the other six and their aunt. The Bishop placed chairs for the two ladies and walked up and down the deck I should think the entire afternoon, first with two children and then with two more and finally with the baby in his arms. This was a funny sight but still not one to be ridiculed, far from it. Well, every day showed my new friend in an improved light. Who was it took all the children, not only his own but actually the entire troop on board up to the bow and down to the stern in a laughing crowd to see this or that or the other? Now a shoal of porpoises, now a distant sail or an iceberg, now the beautiful phosphorescence or the red light of a passing ship—the Bishop. Who divined the innate cliquism of life on board ship and cunningly got together in intercourse the very people who wanted to know each other, and even brought into good temper those unfortunate souls who thought only of their own dignity and station in life? The Bishop. Who organized the Grand Concert and Readings in the saloon, writing the programmes himself, pinning them on the doors, discovering the clever and encouraging the timid and reading from the “Cricket on the Hearth,” and the “Wreck of the Grosvenor,” as I had never imagined a divine could read? The Bishop again. Who might be seen in the mid-day hours when the cabin passengers were asleep, quietly and without ostentation reading or talking to the steerage, ay, and Mrs. Saskabosquia too with her baby on her arm, going about amongst those poor tired folk, many of them with their own babies, not too well fed and not too well washed nor clothed? Still the Bishop, always the Bishop. They appeared as if they could not rest without helping on somebody or something, and yet there was in Mrs. Saskabasquia at least, a delightful sense of calm which affected all who came near her. I used often to sit down by her, she with the inevitable baby on her lap and two or three of the others at her feet on rugs, and she would talk most frankly and unaffectedly of their strange life in Canada. I learnt that she was the daughter of a clergyman in Essex, and had, of course, been brought up in a refined and charming country home like an English gentlewoman. What she had had to do in the new world seemed like a dream.
“What servants do I keep?” she said one day in answer to a question of mine “Why, sometimes I am without any. Then Kathleen and I do the best we can and the children they do the same and my husband takes what we give him! Indeed, my house is a sort of dispensary you know. The most extraordinary people come to me for the most extraordinary things. Now for a bottle of medicine, now for some cast off clothing, now for writing paper and old newspapers or a few tacks. So we have many wants to relieve besides our own and really, that is good for us you know. One Xmas dinner was an amusing one. Roast beef was out of the question, we couldn't get any, and the old woman who usually brought us a turkey came eight miles in the snow to bitterly lament the failure of her turkey crop. The one she had intended for me had been killed and trussed and then the rats which abound out there, got at it in the night and left not a bone of it! So I got the poor old thing a warm cup of tea and gave her some thick socks and sent her away relieved, resolved to spread myself on the pudding. Do you remember Kathleen!”
And Miss Saskabasquia did and smiled at the remembrance.
“What was it like?”
“The pudding? Oh! It was the funniest pudding! George—no—Ethel, was the baby then and very troublesome. Yes, you were my dear and cutting teeth. I was far from strong and in the act of stirring the pudding was taken quite ill and had to give it up. Kathleen was naturally forced to attend to me and the three children, and only for Henry, we should have had no Xmas dinner at all! He went to work with a will, stirred it well, put it into the cloth and was just I believe dropping it into the water when the string broke and the poor pudding tumbled into the water! Of course it was useless, and my husband scarcely knew what to do with himself. Fancy what he did do, though! He went to work and made another out of what he could find without telling us. He'll tell you about it if you ask him, how puzzled he was at first. There was some suet over, only not minced, you know. So he took that just as it was in a lump and buried it in bread-crumbs, luckily we had plenty of bread. Then he broke in the eggs, but when he came to look for the fruit, that was all in the pot of hot water, not a raisin left. He just ladled them out and put them in the second time. I think that was delicious of him don't you? But he forgot the flour and there was so little sugar seemingly in the bag (he didn't know where my Xmas stores were kept) that he took fright and wouldn't use it but broke up some maple sugar instead, then tied it up and got it safely launched the second time. And it was not at all bad, though very shapeless and unlike a trim plum pudding, with the holly at the top.”