Christie Redferns Troubles | Page 2

bark of the birch-tree. She lay quiet for some
time, as if she were thinking of many things; then, kneeling again, with
her head bowed down on her clasped hands, she said:
"O Lord, make me a good child, and take me to heaven when I die, for
Jesus' sake!"
Then she opened her eyes, and rose up with a sigh.
"Oh, how long the shadows have grown! I should have been at home a
long while ago. But now I'll see if Aunt Elsie's no' vexed. If she doesna
scold me, I'll ken that there is some use in praying. And if Effie brings
me a book, such a book as I like, I shall be sure, sure. Then I shall
know that God hears people when they pray; and that will be
something."
And, really, the tired, pale little creature looked as though she needed
something to make her look more cheerfully on a world which
generally seems so happy a place to the young--something to banish the
look of discontent which seemed to have settled on her face.
This was little Christie Redfern--just such a plain, common-looking
child as one might see anywhere without turning to look again. Her

eyes were neither black nor blue, but grey, and dark only when the long
lashes shaded them. Her mouth was too wide to be pretty, and her lips
were pale and thin. She might naturally have had a fair, soft skin; but it
was tanned and freckled by exposure to the air and sun, and looked
neither fair nor soft now. Her brow was high and broad, and would
have been pretty but that she gathered it together in wrinkles when she
looked at anything closely with her short-sighted eyes. She wore a dark
cotton frock and checked pinafore, and her feet, without stockings,
were slipped into shoes that seemed a world too big for them. She
would not have been pretty in any circumstances; but shuffling along in
her big shoes and odd dress, she was a very queer-looking little creature
indeed.
But there was something about the child more to be deplored than the
wide mouth, or the dim eyes, or the drooping figure. There was a look
of unhappiness upon her face which, as any one might see, was in
consequence of no momentary trouble. It seemed to be habitual. As she
plodded along with her eyes cast down on the rough pathway, it never
changed. Once, when the sun, which she thought had set, flashed out
for a moment through the clouds of purple and crimson, causing her to
look up suddenly, the sad expression passed away; but when her eyes
fell it was there again, and she sighed wearily, as though her thoughts
were always sad. It was a long time before she looked up again.
Indeed, there was not very much in the scene around her to attract the
attention of the child, even if her short-sighted eyes could have taken in
the view. There were the clouds; but their crimson and purple glories
had faded. There was the little grove of birch and maple by the side of
the brook--the prettiest place on her father's farm, Christie thought; and
that was all. A bird's-eye view of the country for many miles around
showed no variety of scenery, except the alternation of long, broad
fields of grass and wheat, or, rather, fields where grass and wheat had
been, with wide, irregular stretches of low-lying forest. There was
scarcely a hill deserving of the name to break the monotonous level. It
was a very fine country 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