received their first ideas of religion
at the same place, their tripping tongues to this day call it, not
'Haven,' but 'Heaven.'

The town throve apace in its early days, and no one in it throve better
than Mr. Reid, who kept the general shop. He was a cheerful soul; and it
was owing more to his wife's efforts than his own that his fortune was
made, for she kept more closely to the shop and had a sharper eye for
the pence.

Mrs. Reid was not cheerful; she was rather of an acrid disposition.
People said that there was only one subject on which the shopkeeper and
his wife agreed, that was as to the superiority of their daughter in
beauty, talent, and amiability, over all other young women far or near.
In their broad Scotch fashion they called this daughter Eelan, and the
town knew her as 'Bonnie Eelan Reid'; everyone acknowledged her charms,
although there might be some who would not acknowledge her preeminence.

Mr. and Mrs. Reid carried their pride in their daughter to a great
extent, for they sent her to a boarding-school in the town of Coburgh,
which was quite two days' journey to the south. When she came back from
this educating process well grown, healthy, handsome, and, in their
eyes, highly accomplished, the parents felt that there was no rank in
the Canadian world beyond their daughter's reach, if it should be her
pleasure to attain it.

'It wouldn't be anything out of the way even,' chuckled the happy Mr.
Reid, 'if our Eelan should marry the Governor-General.'

'Tuts, father, Governors!' said his wife scornfully, not because she had
any inherent objection to Governors as sons-in-law, but because she
usually cried down what her husband said.

'The chief difficulty would be that they are usually married before they
come to this country--aren't they, father?' Eelan spoke with a twinkling
smile. She did not choose to explain to any one what she really thought;
she had fancies of her own, this pretty backwoods maiden.

'Well, well, there are lads enough in town, and I'll warrant she'll pick
and choose,' said the jolly father in a resigned tone. He was not
particular as to a Governor, after all.

That conversation happened when Eelan first came home; but a year or two
after, the family conferences took a more serious tone. She had learnt
to keep her father's books in the shop, and had become deft at
housework; but there was no prospect of her settling in a house of her
own; many of the best young men in the p