Chapter 12
On the evening of August 31st 1878, I arrived in Bowmanville, as had been previously arranged. I came by boat, having more pleasant prospects in those days when the world was not in quite such desperate haste, and when a boat from Toronto to Montreal could take time to call the small towns on the way. I was about four hours on the way and felt sorry when we arrived and I once more had to face a strange world. But I need not have feared; I could not have received a kinder welcome than I did from Mrs. Harry Reid, the mother of my pupils-to-be, who herself met me at the wharf.
Perhaps one could hardly imagine a greater contrast than between Mrs. Reid Senior’s large, comfortable, quiet, well-ordered house and the small, irregular establishment, crowded with children, which I now encountered. It was a red brick cottage quite at the extreme end of the town from the grandmother’s house. On one side of a small hall was the school room, with my bedroom off it. On the other side the living room and another bedroom. A little wing had been put on at this side which contained two small rooms. The kitchen, dining room and servant’s bedroom were below. Dr. Harry Reid, who was a stepson of my old friend, had died some two years before, leaving a widow and five children to get on as best they might. Mrs. Reid was exceedingly kind to them and provided education for them, as well as many other things. Mrs. Harry Reid was a very gentle, loving little lady, quite unfit to cope with her energetic family. Her great standby and help in every way was Lily, her eldest daughter of fifteen. She was a very sweet girl, but had a great deal of force and character, and had become old and wise beyond her years, in her efforts to keep things going. Of the others, Nannie was a harum, happy-go-lucky girl of eleven, Mabel an exceedingly pretty little thing of seven, and two boys, Blair and Eddie, completed the family.
It was a very short time before I was friends with them all; indeed I always felt more like an elder daughter in the house than a stranger and generally called Mrs. Harry Reid “mother”. I never had any trouble with the children. Lily was stiff at first, but in a few days thawed out and we were the best of friends. I found afterwards that a mutual friend (?) had been telling her what a mistake it was her grandmother engaging me, as I would be of no use. How little people think when they make such speeches what seeds of mischief they may be sowing.
We had a good-natured country girl as servant, but her ideas of cooking were decidedly hazy. However, she was a good hand at buckwheat pancakes, which formed our breakfast most days—real buckwheat, not the stuff we buy now in packages. Mrs. Reid would say towards supper time: “Which will you have, children, biscuits or Johnny cake?” and we chose according to our fancy. She seldom went to the stores; Nanny was our shopper. She ran round every morning to purchase a small piece of meat to fry, before school, and as she had her choice it was oftener “chalk pops”, as the youngsters called their favorite pork chops, than anything else. But she was a good woman, who loved the Lord and her Bible, and spent much time in prayer, and the atmosphere of the house was one of love. Lily was a Christian too and Eddie Checkley, her husband now for over forty years, had been instrumental in bringing her to the Lord’s Table. We had much happy fellowship together, and long talks, during our daily walk after school.
The meeting was small and rather unique; Mrs. Reid and her family, three rather elderly ladies, Mrs. Armor, her sister Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Cubitt, an elderly brother, Mr. Raynes, and four very young brothers ranging from fifteen to twenty-one. These boys, three of them brothers, were very earnest, and held cottage meetings in the poor end of the town, where Annie Reid and Mrs. Armor had a large Sunday school. We also had a reading meeting at Mrs. Reid’s house every week, indeed the meetings were all held there. I forgot to mention an old crippled brother, Shepherd by name, who came occasionally. He lived in the country and was a very godly man; his very presence seemed to raise the tone of the meeting. Soon after I came we persuaded Mrs. Armor to begin a Bible class for young women. Quite a number used to come and I for one found it very profitable.
Our days went quietly on. I always got up at 6 a.m. so as to get an hour for reading and prayer before breakfast. This was easy when I first got to Bowmanville, but as the winter came on it was cold work. The school room was heated only by a pipe from the kitchen stove below, and the only heat I got was from the school room, and as may be imagined, it was not much. At 7.30 a.m. I superintended the practicing until breakfast time. After that came prayers. Lessons began at nine and went on until twelve, and we had an hour for sewing in the afternoon, then music lessons. About four all was finished, the children went out to play and Lily and I took a walk. The evening was taken up almost invariably with two visitors. The first was Mr. Raynes, who spent nearly every evening sitting with Mrs. Reid in the sitting room. He was really courting her, and unfortunately she yielded to his importunity and they were married a year or so later. It was not a happy match. The two families did not hit things off and they finally separated. But when I was there it was all running smoothly and the daughters, Maggie Raynes and Nannie Reid, spent every available moment together, while little Bessie Raynes was the constant playmate of our three younger children. Our second visitor was Lily’s uncle, Mr. James Reid. He was a widower with two little girls who lived with their mother’s relations. If you could get him to talk he was a very interesting man, but as a rule he never spoke, and would sit with us in the school room all the evening without opening his lips. I often spent the evening either drawing or studying arithmetic, and Mr. Reid was very helpful to me in the latter.
So the days passed quietly by and at Christmas I went home for two weeks. Before this, however, Mrs. Reid and her daughter had returned from England, with her two little grand-daughters, Elsie and Florrie Reid. They were the children of her own eldest son, Mr. John Reid, who was a civil engineer, and had already gone up to that Great Northwest, of which we were soon to hear so much. They of course joined my little school. My brother was also home for Christmas, and he was very full of plans. He had quite decided to go to the Northwest in the spring. I do not know whether the Canadian Pacific Railway was even begun in 1879, but you could go round by Chicago and Minnesota. Homesteads of 160 acres were available to any man over eighteen, and you could also pre-empt another 160 acres, and buy it at $1.00 an acre later. My grandmother had a friend, Dr. Wright, whose son intended to go west in the spring, and she invited Graham to go with him, and they talked a great deal about it. It seemed exactly what we had looked forward to all our lives, and both Graham and I took for granted that I would go too. My mother never opposed the idea. I suppose we had talked so long of going forth together to meet adventures that she had become accustomed to the thought, and of course it was not to be immediately. “I will go in March,” said Graham, “and get the house built, and you will join me in October.” So we parted for a season but fully expected to spend the next winter together in a land of romance and adventure.
On my return to Bowmanville, I found that Eleneen Checkley, my friend Eddie’s sister, was staying with Mrs. Reid Senior. Their father had been a doctor, I think, in St. Vincent, West Indies, and had died some years before, leaving a widow and seven children. The two elder boys, Eddie and Frank, had been sent to their uncle, the Rev. Checkley, who educated them. But when Eddie left the Church of England, his uncle refused to have anything more to do with Him, and then the Mrs. Jones I have mentioned before took him in. Eleneen had also come to Canada to go to school, and I had just missed meeting her several times, so I was pleased to make her acquaintance at last. We took a number of walks together and talked, as I believe only girls can. She was now teaching in the United States in a rich family, with many children, and was much enjoying this visit to this old friend of her father’s. We found we had very much in common, both being Christians and both teaching, and also being exactly the same age. One great difference between us was height, as she had arrived at six feet and I had only succeeded in attaining five. We were very sorry to part and did not know how soon we were to meet again.
About the end of February Graham came to say goodbye to me. It is hard to realize in these days of rapid transit what setting off for the Northwest meant. There was no railway through Canada, and it meant a long and very uncertain journey through the United States. Then when you arrived in Emerson, the first station in Canada again, you had to start off on untried trails. There were no bridges, no roads, no towns, no hotels. One felt it was worse than going to Central Africa would be now. So I may be forgiven if I shed many tears at seeing him go so far, although he declared he should be ready for me in October.
After he was gone the time went quietly on until Easter, when I went home for my holidays. The night before I left I was seized with a violent pain in my side. Mrs. Harry Reid was alarmed and put a mustard plaster on me, which took away the pain, and I walked to the station and traveled to Toronto the next day. But on arriving I was again attacked by the same pain and spent most of my holiday in bed, being nursed up with an attack of false pleurisy. I found my mother and sister in a condition of some excitement. They had had a visit from Mrs. Joseph Robinson, and she had said if only Dora could go to the water cure at Castille, New York, she was sure, it would cure her. My mother was willing to do anything to accomplish this, and decided to give up her house and send Dora to the “cure” at once. Soon after my return to Bowmanville this was done. I think she went with her to Castile and established her in a comfortable boarding house, just opposite to Dr. Green’s establishment. On her return she gave up the house, stored her furniture, and went to pay a long visit to Mrs. Judge Wilson, familiarly known in our circle as Aunt Biddy. She was a stately old lady, very crippled with rheumatism, who lived alone in a little house with a faithful maid. Soon after Dora went to Castille, Lady Robinson decided to take Jue there, and while she was away mother went to keep house. I mention this as it was during this short absence of her mother’s that Mim became engaged to Osmond Cayley.
I never seemed to really recover from the sharp attack of illness at Easter, and as the spring came on, I flagged more and more, until everything I did was a burden. I remember one morning, the end of May, praying earnestly for help, as I felt I could go on with the strenuous work I was employed in no longer. I had not told my mother how unwell I was, but it is possible Mrs. Harry Reid may have done so. However, that very day I got a letter from her, telling me to come home at once and then, as soon as I was able, go also to Castile, while she came to Bowmanville and carried on my little school for the month of June. I was only too thankful to agree, feeling it was a direct answer to prayer. Mrs. Harry Reid felt that she could not undertake to entertain my mother in her cottage, so Mrs. Reid Senior agreed that she should live there, and before many days were over I was in Lady Robinson’s hospitable home, preparing to start for Castille. I was very weak and pretty willful. I remember sitting on the lawn, coughing frightfully, and Lady Robinson and mother said I must sit quietly there and have my dinner, but I said: “No, I can go in,” and getting up I staggered in, saying, “I will, I will, I will”.