"The last time I was honoured with a visit from Betty Fye, she meant to favour me with a very large order upon my goods and chattels.
"'Well, Mrs Fye, what do you want to-day?'
"'So many things, that I scarce know where to begin. Ah, what a thing it is to be poor! First, I want you to lend me ten pounds of flour to make some Johnie cakes.'
"'I thought they were made of Indian meal?'
"'Yes, yes, when you've got the meal. I'm out of it, and this is a new fixing of my own invention. Lend me the flour, woman, and I'll bring you one of the cakes to taste.'
"This was said very coaxingly.
"'Oh, pray don't trouble yourself. What next?' I was anxious to see how far her impudence would go, and determined to affront her, if possible.
"'I want you to lend me a gown and a pair of stockings. I have to go to Oswego, to see my husband's sister, and I'd like to look decent.'
"'Mrs Fye, I never lend my clothes to any one. If I lent them to you, I should never wear them again.'
"'So much the better for me,' (with a knowing grin.) 'I guess if you won't lend me the gown, you will let me have some black slack to quilt a stuff petticoat, a quarter of a pound of tea and some sugar; and I will bring them back as soon as I can.'
"'I wonder when that will be. You owe me so many things that it will cost you more than you imagine to repay me.'
"'Since you're not going to mention what's past, I can't owe you much. But I will let you off the tea and the sugar, if you will lend me a five-dollar bill.'"
This was too much for even Mrs Moodie's patience. She read the incorrigible Betty a sharp lecture upon her system of robbing under colour of borrowing, and concluded by saying she well knew that all the things she had lent her would be a debt owing to the day of judgment.
"'S'pose they are,' quoth Betty, not in the least abashed at my lecture on honesty, 'you know what the Scripture saith, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."'
"'Ay, there is an answer to that in the same book, which doubtless you may have heard,' said I, disgusted with her hypocrisy, 'The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.'
"Never shall I forget the furious passion into which this too apt quotation threw my unprincipled applicant. She lifted up her voice and cursed me, using some of the big oaths temporarily discarded for conscience' sake. And so she left me, and I never looked upon her face again."
Uncle Joe was another pleasant neighbour, and brought up his children to resemble himself. Mrs Joe would occasionally stroll over to visit Mrs Moodie, and exult over the unaccustomed toils to which the young English wife and mother submitted with a cheerfulness that did her infinite honour. It was a rough and hard life, even for men, in that Canadian loghouse; much worse, then, for a delicate woman, and worst of all for one who arrived there with an infant, and whose family rapidly augmented.
"For a week I was alone," writes Mrs Moodie, in the early days of her exile, "my good Scotch girl having left me to visit her father. Some small baby-articles were needed to be washed, and after making a great preparation, I determined to try my unskilled hand upon the operation. The fact is, I knew nothing about the task I had imposed upon myself, and in a few minutes rubbed the skin off my wrists, without getting the clothes clean. The door was open, as it generally was, even during the coldest winter days, in order to let in more light and let out the smoke, which otherwise would have enveloped us like a cloud. I was so busy that I did not perceive that I was watched by the cold, heavy, dark eyes of Mrs Joe, who, with a sneering laugh, exclaimed, 'Well, thank God! I am glad to see you brought to work at last.'"
Further, the amiable Mrs Joe declared her intense hatred of all Britishers, and her hearty wish that her unoffending neighbour might be brought down upon her knees to scrub the floor. Mrs Moodie had sense and dignity enough merely to smile at her vulgar malignity. The impudence of these people knew no bounds. The same evening, Mrs Joe sent over two of her offspring to borrow something she needed of the woman she had spitefully abused in the morning.
During Mrs Moodie's abode near C——, Old Satan got married for the fourth time. This was the occasion of a charivari, a custom dating from the French occupation of Canada, and still kept up there. Mrs Moodie has an amusingly naïf chapter on this subject, concerning which she has collected some curious anecdotes. It is hardly necessary to explain that a mismatch—of a young and an old person—is the usual pretext for a charivari.
"The idle young fellows of the neighbourhood disguise themselves, blackening their faces, putting their clothes on hind part before, and wearing horrible masks, with grotesque caps on their heads, adorned with cocks' feathers, and bells. They then form in a regular body, and proceed to the bridegroom's house, to the sound of tin kettles, horns, drums, &c. Thus equipped, they surround the house, just at the hour when the happy couple are supposed to be about to retire to rest, beating upon the door with clubs and staves, and demanding of the bridegroom admittance to drink the bride's health, or in lieu thereof, a certain sum of money to treat the band at the nearest tavern."
Mrs Moodie expresses all a woman's indignation at what she styles "a lawless infringement upon the natural rights of man." The charivari is usually bought off—she mentions an instance when thirty pounds were disbursed by an antiquated swain who had wedded a handsome widow—but sometimes the victim resists, and the consequences are serious. Shortly before old Satan's bridal, a tragical affair had taken place at one of these saturnalia.
"The bridegroom was a man in middle life, a desperately resolute and passionate man, and he swore that if such riff-raff dared to interfere with him, he would shoot at them with as little compunction as if they were so many crows. His threats only increased the mischievous determination of the mob to torment him; and when he refused to admit their deputation, or even to give them a portion of the wedding cheer, they determined to frighten him into compliance by firing several guns, loaded with peas, at his door. Their salute was returned from the chamber-window, by the discharge of a double-barrelled gun, loaded with buck-shot. The crowd gave back with a tremendous yell. Their leader was shot through the heart, and two of the foremost in the scuffle dangerously wounded. They vowed they would set fire to the house, but the bridegroom boldly stepped to the window and told them to try it, and before they could light a torch he would fire among them again, for his gun was reloaded, and he would discharge it at them as long as one of them dared to remain on his premises. They cleared off."