Christie Redferns Troubles | Page 3

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 her quiet home to devote

herself to their interests; and if they had all been wise and good and
thoughtful, they would not have needed to be reminded so frequently of
her self-denial as Aunt Elsie seemed to think necessary. But few
children are so wise, or good, or thoughtful as they ought to be; and
there were oftentimes secret murmurings, and once or twice during the
first year of her stay there had been open rebellion among them.
It could hardly have been otherwise. No middle-aged woman
unaccustomed to the care of a family, whose heart had never been
softened by the helpless loveliness of little children of her own, could
have filled the place of a mother, wise, firm, and tender, all at once; and
so for a time their household was not a happy one. Their father left his
children to the care of their aunt, as he had always left them to the care
of their mother; and if an appeal from any decision of hers were made
to him, it very seldom availed anything.
It was not so bad for the elder ones. They were healthy, good-tempered
girls, who had companions and interests out of the home-circle; and
they soon learned to yield to or evade what was distasteful in their
aunt's rule. With the little children she was always lenient. It was the
sickly, peevish little Christie who suffered most. More than any of the
rest, more than all the rest put together, she missed her mother: she
missed her patient care and sympathy when she was ill, and her firm
yet gentle management amid the wayward fretfulness that illness
brought upon her. Night after night did her weary little head slumber on
a pillow which her tears had wet. Morning after morning did she wake
up to the remembrance of her loss, with a burst of bitter weeping, angry
at or indifferent to all her aunt's attempts to console her or win her love.
No wonder that her aunt lost patience at last, calling the child peevish
and wilful, and altogether unlovable, and declaring that she had more
trouble and unhappiness with her than with all her sisters put together.
And, indeed, so she had. She rather enjoyed the excitement of keeping
a firm hand over the elder ones, and she soon learned to have patience
with the noise and heedlessness of the little ones. But the peevishness
and wayward fancies of a nervous, excitable child, whom weakness
made irritable, and an over-active imagination made dreams, she could

neither understand nor endure; and so the first year after the mother's
death was a year of great unhappiness to Christie.
After that, there was a great change in the family life. Losses in
business, and other circumstances, induced Mr Redfern to give up his
home and to remove with his family to Canada. Though this decision
was made contrary to the advice of his sister, she would not forsake
him and his children: so she had come with them to the backwoods.
A new and changed life opened to them here, and all the changes that
came to them were not for the better. Mr Redfern knew nothing about
practical farming; and so, though he had means to purchase a sufficient
quantity of good land, it was not surprising to his neighbours that