s eldest son, had,
according to the custom of the island, inherited the farm; and Mrs.
Isabella, confronting her three still unmarried sisters, was able at
last triumphantly to refute their still resentfully remembered
objections to her choice of a husband.

"An' did ye suppose I did not all the time know that it was to this it
was sure to come, soon or late?" she said, with justifiable complacency.
"It's a good thing to have a house o' one's own an' an estate. An' the
linen that's in the house! I've no need to turn a hand to the flax-wheel
for ten years if I've no mind. An' ye can all bide your times, an' see
what John'll make o' the farm, now he's got where he can have things his
own way. His father was always set against anything that was new, an'
the place is run down shameful; but John'll bring it up, an' I'm not an
old woman yet."

This last was the unkindest phrase Mrs. John McDonald permitted herself
to use. There was a rebound in it which told on the Mclntosh sisters;
for they, many years older than she, were already living on tolerance
in their father's house, where their oldest brother and his wife ruled
things with an iron hand. All hopes of a husband and a home of their own
had quite died out of their spinster bosoms, and they would not have
been human had they not secretly and grievously envied the comely,
blooming Isabella her husband, children, and home.

But, with all this, it was no play-day life that Mrs. Isabella had led.
At the very best, and with the best of farms, Prince Edward Island
farming is no high-road to fortune; only a living, and that of the
plainest, is to be made; and when children come at the rate of ten in
twenty-two years, it is but a small showing that the farmer's bank
account makes at the end of that time. There is no margin for fineries,
luxuries, small ambitions of any kind. Isabella had her temptations in
these directions, but John was firm as a rock in withstanding them. If
he had not been, there would never have been this story to tell of his
Little Bel's school-teaching, for there would never have been money
enough in the bank to have given her two years' schooling in
Charlottetown, the best the little city afforded,--"and she boardin'
all the time like a lady," said the severe McIntosh aunts, who
disapproved of all such wide-flying ambitions, which made women
discontented with and unfitted for farming life.

"And why should Isabella be setting her daughters up for teach