Chapter 49.
The children were none of them strong and we rather dreaded the long hot summer. When it was suggested, I do not remember who by, that we should try to get board at a farm house for three months, we fell in with the idea at once. Jack had many farmer friends in the bank, but not everyone was anxious to house four small children. Other places where they would have taken us seemed unsuitable. At last, just the right place was provided; a farm lying beside the lake, with plenty of yard space where the children could play and a motherly, good-tempered widow woman at the head of affairs.
We decided to spend May 24th in having a picnic to the place, to see how it would suit. Alas, the Queen’s birthday rose cold and windy, but we did not feel like putting off our excursion and, all wrapped up warmly, including mother, Aunt Dora and the tiny baby, we set off. Our conveyance was an old cart and I think a still more ancient horse who had no thought of hurry left in him. We appeared to be hours on the road, but at last the seven miles were accomplished and we reached our destination.
It was a rather old, low, frame house with a verandah in front and a belt of willows surrounding it. All round the house were fields, and across two fields you came to the lake. Altogether it seemed most desirable and we arranged to go on June 15th at a very moderate rate of board. Jack was to have a horse and buggy to drive in and out to the bank, and I remember he specially stipulated plenty of cream. We were more than pleased to rent our own house, which made the financial part quite easy.
On June 15th we set off on our travels; it seemed a great undertaking to us in those days. Jack went out first with a wagon load of goods, cots and the cradle, trunks, etc and Dorothy and Christopher. Then he brought back the buggy and horse and, I am sure, with some pride drove me and the babies — and a “baby dog” we had lately acquired—to our new home. If I shut my eyes I can even now forget all these Chinese sights and sounds around me and once more feel myself on that peaceful farm, looking out of our little bedroom window at the lilacs blooming below and feel how restful it all was, and then the joy of no meals to cook for three whole months. I will let Dorothy record her remembrances of it.
“It was the summer after Helen was born that we first went to Mrs. Meadow’s. To us it was an entirely delightful experience, but mother must have found it very weary work, looking after us from early morning till late at night. I was a useless creature. My chief pleasure was helping Mrs. Meadows hunt up eggs. We would crawl about on our hands and knees under the big barn, or climb up the ladder to the loft and hunt all through the hay and look in all corners of the garden. Her hens certainly had a most perverted idea of where to lay their eggs.
“Mother would take us on picnics to the lake; a long walk it seemed to us. There was a steep bank where you could slide down, like a toboggan slide (mother had to make two trips to get both babies down) and then a stony beach. It was usually too cold to bathe.
“We brought our animals to Mrs. Meadows’. There was a huge cage of white mice (‘the dirty varmints’, Mrs. Meadows called them) and then there was Christie’s dear dog Tartar. He was a little fat cocker pup. Mrs. Meadows had a long-legged collie pup. These two were the best of friends but there was one point on which they could not agree. When we went to the beach, Tartar was crazy for us to be always throwing sticks into the water for him to fetch, but the collie feared his fat friend was about to commit suicide and would dash into the shallow water after him and try to pull him out by his ears. Dear Tartar was the most loving, peaceable dog imaginable. He never fought; if any dog came up wishing to fight him he knew how to make the most diabolical face. It was excruciatingly funny to see him. The other dog usually slunk away in terror at beholding it. (N.B. I believe the Chinese were in the habit of doing the same thing and one part of their training as soldiers was learning to make awful faces.) Mrs. Meadows’ collie pup was a regular highwayman and used to eat all the eggs he could find. When towards the end of the summer he came to an untimely end by being run over by the train she had seven dozen more eggs to sell the week after the accident.”
Such quiet, peaceful days we used to have. Sometimes we sat on the little verandah and had a short season of lessons. Sometimes I sat in the hammock with the baby and two or three others, and we watched the birds all round us, feeding their young. One day there was great excitement. A red squirrel ran up the tree in which was our favorite robin’s nest and seized a young robin. At the shout of the children he let his victim fall, but it was badly bitten. Dorothy with a little help climbed the tree and put back the poor little bird, and it apparently got all right again.
One day Jack brought home a number of candy eggs and we put three or four in each of the little nests the children had built, in hope that the birds would lay eggs in them. Their delight on finding these eggs was worth seeing.
Mrs. Meadows had twin daughters of sixteen, Florence and Gertie. They were so alike that even by the end of the summer we could not tell them apart. They were very kind about looking after our dear baby but of course had very little time. Helen never slept as babies do now; one half hour in the morning was all I could persuade her to sleep, but she would sit for an hour at a time in her carriage looking so sweet you could not be cross.
One special treat to the children was to go into the kitchen and scrape the saucepan in which Mrs. Meadows had made her icing. I have a picture before me of Somerville in a little red frock and white pinafore, sitting on the door step, wholly absorbed in this delightful occupation, while beside him stands Christopher, promoted to a blue sailor suit. “Somerville has no consideration for my feelings,” was his indignant remark, much to our kind hostess’ amusement.
Somerville was a pattern baby that summer. He had a small box of blocks and would sit for hours on a rug beside me playing with them. Unlike his sociable brother, he always liked to play alone. He was devoted to animals. On one occasion, seeing a large collie dog belonging to a neighbor, he threw his arms around it. Providentially his father was there and rescued him, but he had a bad bite on the face and some deep scratches.
Dorothy, when not with Mrs. Meadows, spent most of her time reading, but she loved to play in the old willow tree by the kitchen door or ride in the empty farm wagons. One day she came in to me and said solemnly: “Bill said ‘Ho Mauyel’”. She felt it was a bad word he had used and was much shocked. He really had answered her question of what he was going to do by saying: “Hoe mangolds”.
As the summer went on and harvesting began, there was an afternoon lunch to carry to the men in the fields, and we often took it in the baby carriage, afterwards sharing in the coffee and buns and cake. Food was never stinted; the children could always have cookies for a “party” and we had all the milk and cream we could use. And the peas —I have never tasted such delicious peas. Once or twice I had a visitor and then the girls would “run down” a chicken and it would be plucked and cooked in a trice.
My sister was staying with Miss Annie Reid in Bowmanville and had Dorothy to spend a week with her there, and then Dora came over and stayed with Dorothy and Somerville for a few days and Christopher, Helen and I went to Bowmanville. We had two trips all together during the summer. One was when Jack hired a democrat and two horses and drove us all to Bowmanville. What a delightful day it was and how good Annie’s leg of mutton tasted after the farm fare. I think Jack and I will always remember coming up to the station at Newtonville. It was fairly dark but a train was rushing in with its great fiery eye and terrific noise and the horses were badly frightened, but Jack was able to hold them and we came safely by.
Our second trip was more ambitious. Jack had to go to Lakefield on business and he took us all with him on the steamer through the lakes. It is a lovely trip and was a very pleasant break in the summer. But I must not linger longer over this pleasant restful summer, though I would like to speak of our happy Sunday afternoons down by the lake, when I used to read the Pilgrim’s Progress to Jack and the children, while the cows browsed close by us and the lake was softly rippling at our feet.
I think Jack used to enjoy his seven mile drive morning and evening, though he had a very dangerous crossing to go over and was once nearly caught by the train. He usually left at 8 a.m. and did not get back until 7 p.m., so it was a long day.
But like all good things, our summer came to an end and we went back to town, the children all so much stronger for their summer out of doors, though Christopher said with a sigh: “I like Mrs. Meadows very much but I wish she did not keep bees and mosquitoes” (he had recently fallen into a bees’ nest in the garden).