Christie Redferns Troubles | Page 4

his
first attempt should be unsuccessful. His children were of the wrong
sort, too, his neighbours said; for only one of the eight was a lad, and
he was only six when he came to his new home. No pair of hands could
gather, from ever so good a farm, food enough to fill so many mouths;
and more than one of the kind people who took the affairs of the
new-comers into their especial consideration, shook their heads gravely
over their prospects. And for a time they were badly off.
Soon after their arrival in their new home, Aunt Elsie was seized with
an illness which lingered long, and left her a cripple when it went away;
and her temper was not of the kind which suffering and helplessness
are said sometimes to improve. It was a trying time to all.
But winter passed over. Spring came, and with it came a measure of
health to Aunt Elsie. She could move about on a crutch and give
directions in the house, and do many things besides, which a less
energetic person would never have attempted. The elder girls, Effie,
Sarah, and Annie, proved themselves of the right sort, so far as energy,
and strength, and a right good-will were concerned, and worked in the
fields with their father as though they had been accustomed to it all
their lives. So, when two or three years had passed away, the glances
which the neighbours sent into the future of the Redferns revealed by
no means so dreary a prospect as formerly.
A change for the better had come over Christie, too. She would never

be as hopeful or as healthy as her sisters, her aunt said; but in health
and hopefulness, and in temper too, there was a great change for the
better in Christie at the end of the first three years of her Canadian life.
But Christie was far from being what she ought to be in respect to the
latter item even then, as her aunt often told her; and she had good cause
to be of her aunt's opinion many times before the summer was over.
It was, for several reasons, a time of trial to the child. Her eldest sister
Effie, whom she loved best of all, was away from home as
school-mistress in a neighbouring township, only returning home for
the Sunday, and not always able to do that. Her absence made the
constant assistance of Sarah and Annie indispensable to their father. So
the work of the household, and the care of the dairy during the greater
part of the summer, fell to Christie, under the superintendence of Aunt
Elsie; and a great deal more strength and patience was needed than
Christie had at her disposal. She would gladly have changed with her
sisters for their harder places in the fields; but the cold of the spring and
autumn mornings chilled her, and the heat of summer exhausted her,
and there was no alternative but the work of the house. This would
have been wearisome enough under any circumstances to a child not
very strong; and it was sometimes rendered more than wearisome by
the needless chidings of her aunt.
Not that her aunt meant to be unkind, or that her chidings were always
undeserved or her complaints causeless. Her mother could not have
been more careful than her aunt was, that Christie should not put her
hand to work beyond her strength. But probably her mother would have
felt that a child might become weary, even to disgust, of a never-ending,
never-changing routine of trifling duties, that brought no pleasant
excitement in their train, that could scarcely be named or numbered
when the day was done, yet whose performance required time and
strength and patience beyond her power to give. But if her aunt ever
thought about this, she never told her thoughts to Christie; and to the
child the summer days often passed wearily enough. It is to be doubted
whether the elder sisters, after a long harvest-day, went to bed more
tired and depressed than did Christie, who, in their opinion, had been
having an easy time. Not but that Annie and Sarah understood in some

measure the troubles that might fall to Christie's lot under the
immediate superintendence of Aunt Elsie; and they were sometimes
ready enough to congratulate themselves on their own more free life
out of doors. But, strong and healthy as they were, they could not
understand how the work which would have seemed like play to them
could be such a burden to their little sister; and they sometimes sadly
added to her discontent by making light of her troubles, and ascribing
to indolence and peevishness the complaints which, too often, fell from
her lips.
There had