Christie Redferns Troubles | Page 4

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 not, during all the summer, been a more uncomfortable day than the one whose close found Christie sitting so disconsolately under the birch-tree by the brook. It had begun badly,