“The fust winter is boun’ ter be hard,” Uncle Adzi admitted reluctantly, “specially on you, Marthie.”
“ll manage somehow, don’t you worry, Uncle Adzi. We’ve never died yet, and we’ll hang on hard this winter.”
“But jist how ye aim ter manage ter set the table three times a day fer we-all, I jist naterally cain’t figger out. They do say down at the settlement”—he brightened visibly at the recollection—“that Doctor McLoughlin loans each emigrant family two cows to use. If we can have milk this winter, we’ll make it.”
“John is going to Vancouver to see about it as soon as we can get under cover,” assured Martha as she busied herself in making preparations for supper, placing the skillet properly on the bed of live coals in readiness to receive the grouse that Uncle Adzi was skinning with the unerring precision of the seasoned hunter.
“My word!” she ejaculated as she straightened up from the camp fire, “won’t it seem good to cook in a fireplace again? Camp fires smoke so when there is a wind, and the crane in the fireplace certainly does save the back; stooping so much sort of tires me.”
The children came trooping in from the timber behind the clearing, where they had been exploring. Martha had laughed when they declared their intention of hunting berries. The 21st of November is rather late, but they carried on a stick between them an Indian basket partly filled with shattered clusters of late-hanging elderberries.
Rose Ann was just turned sixteen, a slip of a girl
