ntry indeed in the estimation of the busy
groups who were here and there gathering in the last sheaves of a
plentiful harvest. The farmers of Laidlaw were wont to boast, and with
reason, too, of their wheat-crops, and their fine roads and fences,
declaring that there was not in all Canada a district that would surpass
or even equal theirs in respect of these things. But beauty of this
sort a child cannot be supposed to appreciate. Christie's home for the
first ten years of her life had been in a lovely Scottish village,
within three miles of the sea on one side and less than three miles from
the hills on the other; and the dull, unvaried level, the featureless
aspect of her present home, might well seem dreary to the child.

But the contrast between the old life and the new was greater still; and
here lay the secret of the shadow that seldom left the face of the
little girl now. For in the old times, that seemed so long ago,
Christie had been the one delicate child in a large and healthy family,
and therefore her loving mother's constant and peculiar care. And her
mother was dead now. I need not say more to prove how sad and changed
her life had become.

I think that, meeting her on her homeward way that afternoon, one might
have almost seen the motherless look in her pale face and drooping
figure and in the lingering tread of her weary little feet. It was a
look more painful to see than the look of sadness or neglect which
motherless children sometimes wear. It was of a wayward temper grown
more wayward still for want of a mother's firm and gentle rule. One
could not doubt that peevish words and angry retorts fell very naturally
from those pale lips. She looked like one who needed to be treated with
patience and loving forbearance, and who failed to meet either. And,
indeed, the rule to which Christie was forced to submit was neither firm
nor gentle. Sometimes it was firm, when Christie, as she not
unfrequently did, ventured to resist it; but gentle--never.

When Christie's mother died, all their friends said the little Redferns
were very fortunate in having an Aunt Elsie to supply her place in the
household; and in some respects they were. If a constant and
conscientious determination to do her duty to her brother's motherless
children would have made up to them for their loss, they would have been
quite happy under Aunt Elsie's care. She made a great sacrifice of her
own ease and comfort when she left