The Black Creek Stopping-House | Page 8

the untidiness of her house. She chattered gaily to hide
the trouble in her face, and Mrs. Corbett wisely refrained from any
apparent notice of her tears, and helped her to unpack her trunks and set
the house to rights.
Mrs. Corbett showed her how to make a combined washstand and
clothes press out of two soap boxes, how to make a wardrobe out of the
head of the bed, and set the twin sailors at the construction of a
cookhouse where the stove could be put.
When Mrs. Corbett left that afternoon it was a brighter and more
liveable dwelling. Coming home along the bank of Black Creek, she
was troubled in mind and heart for her new neighbor.
"This is June," she said to herself, "and wild roses are crowdin' up to
her door, and the meadow larks are sittin' round all over blinkin' at the
sun, and she has her man with her, and she ain't tired with the work,
and her hands ain't cracked and sore, and she hasn't been there long
enough to dislike the twins the way she will when she knows them

better, and there's no mosquitoes, and she hasn't been left to stay alone,
and still she cries! God help us! What will she do in the long drizzle in
the fall, when the wheat's spoilin' in the shock maybe, and the house is
dark, and her man's away--what will she do?"
Mrs. Brydon spent many happy hours that summer at the
Stopping-House, and soon Mrs. Corbett knew all the events of her past
life; the sympathetic understanding of the Irish woman made it easy for
her to tell many things. Her mother had died when she was ten years
old, and since then she had been her father's constant companion until
she met Fred Brydon.
She could not understand, and so bitterly resented, her father's dislike
of Fred, not knowing that his fond old heart was torn with jealousy. She
and her father were too much alike to ever arrive at an understanding,
for both were proud and quick-tempered and imperious, and so each
day the breach grew wider. Just a word, a caress, an assurance from her
that she loved him still, that the new love had not driven out the old,
would have set his heart at rest, but with the cruel thoughtlessness of
youth she could see only one side of the affair, and that her own.
At last she ran away and was married to the young man, whom her
father had never allowed her to bring to see him, and the proud old man
was left alone in his dreary mansion, brooding over what he called the
heartlessness of his only child.
Mrs. Corbett, with her quick understanding, was sorry for both of them,
and at every opportunity endeavored to turn Evelyn's thoughts towards
home. Once, at her earnest appeal, after she had got the young woman
telling her about how kind her father had been to her when her mother
died, Evelyn consented to write him a letter, but when it was finished,
with a flash of her old imperious pride, she tore it across and flung the
pieces on the floor, then hastily gathered them up and put them in the
stove.
One half sheet of the letter did not share the fate of the remainder, for
Mrs. Corbett intercepted it and hastily hid it in her apron pocket. She
might need it, she thought.

CHAPTER V.
THE PRAIRIE CLUB-HOUSE.
The tender green of the early summer deepened and ripened into the
golden tinge of autumn as over the Black Creek Valley the mantle of
harvest was spread.
Only a small portion of the valley was under cultivation, for the oldest
settler had been in only for three years; but it seemed as if every grain
sowed had fallen upon good soil and gave promise of the hundredfold.
Across John Corbett's ten acres of wheat and forty acres of oats the
wind ran waves of shadow all day long, and the pride of the land-owner
thrilled Maggie Corbett's heart over and over again.
Not that the lady of the Stopping-House took the time to stand around
and enjoy the sensation, for the busy time was coming on and many
travellers were moving about and must be fed. But while she scraped
the new potatoes with lightning speed, or shelled the green peas, all of
her own garden, her thoughts were full of that peace and reverent
gratitude that comes to those who plant the seed and see it grow.
It was a glittering day in early August; a light shower the night before
had washed the valley clean of dust, and now the hot harvest sun
poured down his ripening rays over the pulsating earth. To