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A New Zealand Courtship and other Work-A-Day Stories

Chapter I

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Chapter I

Mrs. Harkiss sat by the kitchen window, making buttonholes in the body of a pretty brown dress, spun from New Zealand wool. Warm weather had lingered late, and she had on her summer afternoon dress of grey linen, with a black ribbon in her white cap. She could not go on wearing her widow's garb of black, except on state occasions—black dresses spoil too quickly on the dusty Canterbury plains, under the glowing sun of New Zealand. She liked a washing grey, and she wore it with a certain air, as a woman may, who has come out victorious from the struggle of widowhood with seven children and a mortgage on the farm, beholden to no one but herself and 89 page 90her own brave sons and daughters. She had received a great deal of neighbourly kindness by the way, and had been able to return it handsomely. And now that the farm was free, and her younger sons grown into fine young fellows, able to work it without keeping John from his trade—although times in the colony were very different from the times of twenty-five years ago, and the average struggle of life had increased, she had a pleasing sense of being even with the world—able to pay her way comfortably—to have the working-party in her turn, and take a table (which means, in the colonies, to supply it) at school and chapel tea-meetings.

Her spirits were higher than usual this afternoon, because Madge, her second daughter, was at home, and they were all busy dressmaking for Annie, the eldest, who was happily married to a tradesman in Christchurch. Madge had been 'out' for eight years, and had had only two situations in all the time. She had just left the second, and was feasting on all the delights of home.

'You can't call it holiday exactly, if you set us all up with dresses,' said Cherry, a bright girl of sixteen, with merry dark eyes, and lilies and roses which had resisted abundant exposure to sun and wind. She was working the machine while her sister cut out and tacked.

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'It all seems like holiday here,' said Madge, 'when we work together. Somehow, at home the work always seems to get through, and leave a bit of time over for doing what we like.'

'Well, dear, suppose you stay here, since you like it so well,' said her mother. 'I am sure the boys would have no objection, nor Cherry either,' and Cherry chimed in with enthusiasm.

'It seems lazy, rather, for two of us to be at home, living on the boys,' said Madge.

'You earn your keep; it all comes off the farm, nearly,' said Mrs. Harkiss; ' and you could dress-make for friends to make a little for yourself.'

Here her cheerful face grew brighter still, for her firstborn came in sight. John had been settled in his own corner of the farm with his little wife for nearly six months.

'Well, mother, what's wrong?' he asked, stopping outside the window; for she had sent him word that she wanted the carpenter.

'Something out here,' she answered, rising and turning towards the back regions.

'How is Sallie?' asked Madge.

A shadow came over John's good-tempered face. 'Not as well as she might be,' he answered. 'I did think she would have done with old Crump' (his name for her uncle Chuckers) 'when I got her home; but no—as long as he can worry auntie page 92he can worry Sallie. Their girl has left again; they will never get one to stay; and there's Sallie, instead of sitting down to rest when her own work's done, going over to help auntie, till she is done up altogether. It'll be the death of her, I believe.'

Madge looked up startled, for John's voice quite shook. It was so unlike him to make a trouble of anything; she hardly ever remembered seeing such a look of distress upon his face.

'Why do you let her, John?' exclaimed Cherry. 'Sallie was always talking about your being her master, before you were married, but really I don't see it at all now.'

'Well, I like a girl to have her own way in reason,' said John. 'Don't you think you will want yours, when you get married, Miss Cherry?'

'Only when I was right,' said Cherry; at which they all burst out laughing.

'You may laugh,' she persisted stoutly. 'I say a man wouldn't be worth having at all if he couldn't make me knuckle down when I was in the wrong.'

'And when would that be?' asked John. 'When is Cherry in the wrong, Madge, by her own account?'

They laughed again, but John saw Cherry colour up, and said kindly, 'And what's odd, I page 93think she mostly is right, when her mind's made up.'

He went round the verandah to meet his mother at the back, and did not return. Mrs. Harkiss came in, looking very grave.

'I'm afraid it's serious about Sallie,' she said. 'John says it's the shock she had with his accident, and the worry and work all those years, are telling upon her now. It's not that she wouldn't stop at home if he made her, but he is afraid the fretting would hurt her more than going. She has got auntie on her mind; that's the way it has taken her, and she doesn't seem able to help it.'

'But how silly of her, when she knows she oughtn't to,' said Cherry; and Madge added, as her mother left the room, 'It comes hard upon John.'

'I should think it did,' said Cherry indignantly. 'The fact is, John is too much married, and Sallie isn't married enough.' And they sat working on, and talked over poor Sallie's errors of judgment, and the various ways in which she had shown a want of strength of mind, as even affectionate relatives sometimes will, especially when two branches of one family are established in opposite corners of a sixty-acre lot.

'Is Sallie down at Chuckers' now?' asked Madge, when their mother returned.

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'No; she promised John she would stay quiet this afternoon,' said Mrs. Harkiss, 'but he knew he would find her quite in a way when he got home. I said I would go over and talk to her, but I've just remembered Mrs. Smallman was telling me of a girl she knew over at Riccarton, wanting to go out, and I should do more good going to see if I could get her for Mrs. Chuckers.'

'Then I'll go to Sallie. You don't want any more machine-work yet, do you, Madge?' said Cherry, jumping up in some compunction, as she thought of John's kind word.

She went by the road, and on her way met her old deaf friend, Mrs. Wren, who stopped to make inquiries. Cherry had the family gift of clear utterance, and soon made the little old lady understand that Sallie was very naughty, and hurting herself with fretting over auntie's troubles.

'Ah, dear, don't blame her for that, if you want to be cared for yourself when you grow old and weak,' said Mrs. Wren. 'It's harder to go off the stage with a grace than to come on, Cherry. We want good children and grandchildren to help us do it. And the worst of all is to be left standing on the stage with a part too hard for one. That's poor auntie now; and she has been like a mother to Sallie.'

Cherry looked impressed, but walked on, still page 95full of virtuous sentiments which she was going to bring out for her sister's benefit. But when she arrived, and found good, patient Sallie crying in her low chair, she forgot them all, and only came behind and put her arms round her neck, saying, ' Why, Sallie, what's the matter?'

The answer was not quite what she had expected. A certain doctor, after investigating a case of nervous breakdown, remarked,' The bottom of it all is conscience.' Conscience had taken aim at Sallie's overwrought nerves, with her aunt and her husband both in its quiver, and it was hard to say which rankled most. She was distracted to find that John's commands could ever contradict her sense of duty.

'Suppose he knows best?' said Cherry archly; but she found she must leave the arguments on that side to her mother. Sallie firmly believed that John was infallible, whenever he had full materials for judgment; but in this case she did not think he had, and persisted,' He doesn't know. Nobody can, that hasn't lived there.'

'Suppose I go and see,' said Cherry. 'Then I could help auntie a bit, and tell her that mother has gone to see about getting her a girl.'

To do her justice, this was not the first time that Cherry had made a similar proposal, but John had always set his foot upon it.

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'No, no,' he said. 'If you once begin that, there'll be no end. You're not to slave for old Crump for nothing, when he has lots of tin to pay with; and you shan't take his money for it.'

This time, however, Cherry felt that an exception must be made, for once; and having set out vigorously determined to preach the subjection of wives, she next found herself marching off to ' auntie's,' in flat disobedience to the lord of this corner of creation.

As she went in at the gate, Chuckers came out of the front door, and banged it behind him.

'How do you do, Mr. Chuckers?' said Cherry. 'Is auntie at home?'

'Yes,' in his surly voice, without an offer to show her in.

'Can I go in and see her?'

'No.'

'Is anything the matter? 'asked Cherry bravely.

'The matter is, if you want to know, she's up to her eyes in washing, and you'd better keep clear on it,' and Chuckers walked away.

Cherry stood still till he was out of sight, round the house, and then walked round the other side to the back, where Mrs. Chuckers stood in her little wash-house, washing and sighing. Half-past three on a Thursday afternoon, and washing still!

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'Why, auntie, you are busy,' said Cherry, looking in.

'Oh, my dear, I think I must give up!' said Mrs. Chuckers. 'Nineteen cows in milk, and I did them all this morning. I said I would, if Jupp might do it all this afternoon, and give me a chance to get through with the washing. He don't come soon enough to do them all in a morning. And here I'm not done, and it'll be dark before I could get the things out; and I did want 'em dry tomorrow, to be ironing.'

'Oh, there's time for them to dry a lot, now, this hot day,' said Cherry. 'I'll hang them out.'

She turned up her sleeves, pinned up her afternoon dress, and seized the basket full of clothes. Wet linen weighs heavy. Cherry panted a little, as she struggled off with her load. At that moment Chuckers must needs come by.

'What be you after there?' he said, roughly taking the basket from her and setting it down. He turned towards his wife and called out fiercely, 'Is this what you've come to? Get your washing on to this time o' day, and when a friend comes to see you, set her carrying a gurt heap o' clothes like that? What be you thinking on?'

This was very mild language for him, but Cherry's presence was some restraint.

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'Oh, Chuckers, you know I've got no help, and I can't get through without,' said his wife piteously.

"Tain't help you want, it's sense. If you had the wits of a flea, you wouldn't be in this 'ere caddle,' said Chuckers.

He subsided into grunts, and Cherry said, 'It was I ran off with the basket, Mr. Chuckers. I beg your pardon if it was a liberty. But if you wouldn't mind taking the other end, we could carry it easy enough, and I'd like to.'

Chuckers stood and stared at her in amazement for a moment; then, not seeing what else to do, deliberately stooped and took a handle. Cherry took the other, and off they walked with the basket between them. Mrs. Chuckers left off washing to look. Jupp, the man who worked on the farm, stopped also, and grinned after them through the wire fencing. To see 'old Crump' lend a hand was astonishing.

They reached the drying-ground, where the lines were ready. Cherry thanked Mr. Chuckers, and he shambled off to his work in the field hard by. As he grubbed away, clearing a patch where he was going to put in a crop, he stole glances at the young, light figure in the pretty pink cotton frock, flitting to and fro between basket and lines. Cherry could not outdo her sister-in-law in energy page 99and deftness at her work, but she had a prettier way of going about it.

What pleasant work it was, shaking out the clothes and hanging them up, under the blue sky, in the sweet, warm air of the summer afternoon—a couple of hens with their downy broods clucking round, with a vague hope of picking up something to their advantage. The clothes were not pretty at all, but they were all fresh washed and rinsed, and smelt of cleanliness.

By the time the basket was empty, Mrs. Chuckers had rinsed and wrung out the last of her wash. Cherry hung it all out, and helped to get the tea—then slipped off before Chuckers came in, and ran round to Sallie, to report progress. Sallie looked a different creature already, and gave her such a kiss that Cherry's heart was pricked by the remembrance of certain remarks she had made this very afternoon. When Chuckers stormed at his wife without putting out a hand to help her, conscience had cried out—

'This man's but a picture of what I might be.'

How was she superior to him, if she took occasion from other people's troubles to sit up and say how much better they ought to have managed, instead of trying to help them? She would not have spoken in his ferocious way ('Thanks to my page 100friends for their care in my breeding,' she thought), but Sallie would mind a very few words from John's sisters more than a cycle of storms from Chuckers. And, what was more, his scoldings would only raise, not damage her, in other people's eyes, while Cherry's—the girl suddenly grew hot all over to think what she had said to Mrs. Wren. If it had been to anyone less kind, less fond of them all, what mischief she might have made!

She ran home very penitent, and found that her mother had returned from Mrs. Smallman's, with the news that the damsel at Riccarton was snapped up already at eight shillings a week. Chuckers would not give more than six.

'He will never get one worth anything at that—not with things so uncomfortable as they are there,' said Madge.

Twenty years ago, he would have had to pay eight or ten, even for the rough, unkempt sort of maiden who would take such a place as his; but times have changed, and everyone has less money to spend.

'You know it's very much auntie's fault,' said Frank, the second son, cutting fresh slices from the great home-made loaf. 'She has always given in to him, and that's enough to make any man a Turk.'

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'You mustn't say that before Cherry,' said Madge. 'She's going to look out for somebody who will keep her under.'

'I'd like to see him try,' said Willie, the next boy.

'I'd like to see old Chuckers try,' said Frank. 'It would have been "Greek meets Greek," wouldn't it, if he had had Cherry?'

'Suppose I give him a chance,' said Cherry.

'What?' cried everybody.

'Well, he wants a girl, and you won't want me here if Madge comes home,' said Cherry, colouring as she spoke.

'You don't mean go and be slavey over there?' said Frank, opening his eyes.

'No, I don't want to be slavey. I want to see if I can make a conquest,' said Cherry gaily, but blushing redder and redder. 'I made a beginning this afternoon;' and she described the scene of the clothes-basket in a way that made them all laugh. But when she repeated her proposal in sober earnest, her brothers would not hear of it. She would be letting herself down, and all the family with her. She would be a fool, for she ought to know what she would have to put up with. If she thought she could tame Timothy Chuckers, let her have a try first on Smallman's bull; he was not half such a tough customer; and so forth. Cherry page 102answered back merrily, but all the time she was waiting with rather a beating heart for her mother to speak. At last a pause came, and she said softly, 'Mother?'

'Did you want to go out, dear?' said Mrs. Harkiss.

'I only thought of it this afternoon,' said Cherry.

Madge broke in that Cherry was not to be sacrificed for her, and Frank, who had put on great airs, as head of the family since John's marriage, declared there was no necessity for either of them to go out, unless they chose. Mrs. Harkiss would not say much till she could be alone with Cherry. She wanted to know if the girl had counted the cost.

'Yes, mother, I know it will be pretty hard lines over there,' said Cherry. 'But if I could do it just for this year, it might make such a lot of difference to Sallie, and auntie too, I would go in for putting up with it. And I know I would never let Mr. Chuckers serve me like he did Sallie.'

'I should hope not,' said Mrs. Harkiss; 'but nothing could alter its being a very hard place, and very dull to what you are used to.'

'That's it, mother,' said Cherry. 'I've never had any but good times yet, and Sallie has had such hard ones.'

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'And you think it's time you took up the cross,' said Mrs. Harkiss.

'Oh, mother!' Cherry shrank from the word. When she thought what the very cross had been, it shocked her to give such a name to bearing a little rough work and rough living for a few months.

'Take up your cross, I mean, dear,' said her mother.

'Yes,' said Cherry. 'But don't say that to the boys, please, mother. Don't let's talk about crosses to them, or they won't like me going. Let's tell them I want to make a conquest, and like the fun—and so I shall,' she added, with a courageous gulp.

Mrs. Harkiss told her to sleep upon it.

The two sisters slept together, and when they had read their usual chapter that evening, and Madge knelt down to her prayers, Cherry turned the leaves of the Bible and read,' Thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.'

It would be a great self-denial to go to the Chuckers'—how great, she realised more and more as she thought of it. But she must never say so page 104—least of all to John and Sallie. She must tell them—what was quite true—that she thought it was time she earned something of her own to put by, and would like to stay near home. She need not pretend that the wish to help them had nothing to do with it; but they must not know how she would hate the everlasting 'caddie' in that house—nor the secret hankering she had to see something of life beyond the Rakawahi, if she left Sweet Home at all. They must think that the plan had advantages for her. And so it had—not least because she did not like it. She and her younger brother Hugh had never felt the pinch of the struggling time; they were the youngest, and the others had always spared and petted them. She sometimes saw the consequences in Hugh to his disadvantage, and she had sense enough to know that other people would be likely to see them in herself. A little touch of 'hard lines' would do her no harm. She was just the one to bear them, as strong as a pony, and as gay as a lark.

Besides, the meeting with Mrs. Wren that day had brought back the time of John's accident, and Laura Wren's address to the school, on the following Sunday. Laura had told how the pony had been God's messenger, calling her mother, through all the silence in the poor deaf ears, to the place where He had work for her to do; and page 105then she went on to speak of all the voiceless wants around us—the griefs and needs, unknown to man, well known to God, that we might succour if we knew; and she said, 'Should we not each pray, morning by morning, "Lord, say, Ephphatha—Be opened—to my ears this day. Let me not be deaf to any call of Thine. And if there is sorrowful sighing going up, too low for anyone to hear, then send a little Providence to show me the sorrow and tell me what to do."'

Cherry had listened, her heart soft with her untold thankfulness for John's life spared, and thought she could never forget to pray, every morning,' Lord, say Ephphatha to me.' But she had forgotten, after a time—until this afternoon. As she ran home across the paddocks, with the family difficulties on her mind, she had prayed that little prayer again; and when she heard that the Riccarton girl could not be had, the call came—as plainly as any call to the mission field—to go over into the next lot, and do what she could towards taming Timothy Chuckers, who was certainly the most savage old heathen she knew.

She looked on a little farther, and read the promise to the twelve: 'It shall be given you in that same hour what ye ought to say.' That must be as true for everyone who goes where God has sent; and she could claim that it would be given page 106her, all in a minute, what to say to the boys, and John, and Chuckers himself, when she went over. To be sure, the words she wanted would be mostly jokes and nonsense to carry it off, that she might 'appear not unto men to fast'; but God could give merry words just as much as He could grave ones, when they were wanted. Who else taught the kittens to frolic and the birds to sing?

She could not quite succeed in 'appearing not to fast unto' John: he knew too well what she might have before her, and would never have let her do it, if she had not convinced him that she would go with her eyes open.

'What will it matter? 'she said. 'I ain't going to marry him, as you would say. It would be a pretty deal more trouble to have Sallie knocked down than to put up with being there for a year or so.'

'A year? 'said John.

'Well—if I stop through the winter, I don't see how I could leave just before shearing, and harvest, and all,' said Cherry. 'It would look so shabby.'

'Well, you're a trump, you are,' John said, after a pause, and gave her a hug and a kiss that paid her beforehand for any sacrifice that this might cost.

'Mind, you've got to settle Sallie: that's your part,' she said. She had been bent on settling it page 107all before telling John anything about it, and how glad she was, now, that her mother had not allowed that!

'She won't feel it like we do,' said John.

'And, mind, you must give me a fair chance,' said Cherry. 'If you come prowling round to see how I am getting on, Chuckers will be savage. Stand clear, and let him and me fight it out. And don't make a favour of it, for goodness' sake, or you'll ruin my conquest.'

John looked so doubtful at that, that Cherry determined to trust no one but herself, and, with her mother's leave, walked over alone to make the offer of her services. She saw that Chuckers did not like it, and even his wife was more than half afraid of having her; but their difficulty was too real for them to refuse. Mrs. Chuckers said she was afraid there would be too much work.

'I ain't a bit afraid of work—I'm used to it,' said Cherry, looking first into the mistress's face and then into the master's. 'And I'm used to minding orders, too. We've all got to do that at home.'

Chuckers was looking her over, from the bit of white edging at her neck to her neat little shoes, with a mortal presentiment that from the hour when this smart young damsel entered his door he would have to be on his best behaviour, and never page 108again rage and scold in peace. It was a very serious prospect—in fact, a dreadful one. But when she looked up at him so brightly, and said, 'I'm used to minding orders,' it crossed his mind that he might bring her under, instead of she him, and such a conquest would be a very agreeable and unexpected feather in his frowzy cap. So, by way of showing his colours at once, he turned upon his wife and said fiercely—

'I dunno what you do mean by talking about work. There ain't none, not to what other women's got to do; and if you wasn't a caddler out and out, you wouldn't want no girl. No children,' he continued, turning to Cherry, 'no man in to meals all the winter, a room of your own, and plenty of everything. That's what we give—and six shillings a week. You may take it or leave it. I can't give no more, and I won't, neither; and if you don't take it you'll lose a good bargain.'

'Thank you, Mr. Chuckers. I'll tell mother, and see what she says,' answered Cherry, rising. 'Madge says wages are higher in the town, but I would like to stay near mother, if she thinks it enough.'

Of course her own people did not think it enough for her worth, but Cherry's earnestness overruled their objections. Mrs. Harkiss went round and page 109settled the bargain, not a little to 'the boys" disgust.

'I met your conquest coming out of town to-day, Cherry,' said Frank. 'My word! if I wanted a victim, I'd go in for a handsomer one.'

'Don't insult my choice. I won't have it,' said Cherry.

'I suppose you intend to look very meek to start with,' said Willie. 'Pretend to knuckle down to him to get your own way.'

'Call him "sir." That'll fetch him,' said Hugh.

'No,' said Frank; and Cherry exclaimed—

'No, I won't. What's the good of a conquest if you only get it by making a fool of a man? I shall behave just the same to him as I would to anybody else, and not try to get over him with mean ways.'

She was sweeping the verandah next morning, with a crimson-bordered kerchief twisted over her bonnie dark hair, when John came by with Frank.

'Hallo, Cherry! Are you going to put that on for Timothy?' said Frank—for the effect was really bewitching.

'To be sure. Don't you think it ought to finish him?' said Cherry.

'He'll never see it,' said John, walking on.

'He may feel it, though, perhaps,' said Cherry, and added to Madge, when he was out of hearing, page 110'I'm sure that's one thing that made him worse to Sallie and auntie — they were always such drabs about their work. I mean to keep up a little.'

'You are quite right, Cherry,' said her mother, in the doorway. 'Use enough aprons to be decent, and if it makes too much washing, you can always bring them over here.'

'Ah, that's the difference between Sallie and me,' said Cherry afterwards to Madge. 'I shall have home at my back. She never had any. If things were too much, she had just to go without—nobody helped her.'

So the brave little woman packed her box. Frank took it round in the cart; and when the stars began to twinkle, and the night-air was frosty after a brilliant, summer-like day, the two sisters walked quietly over together, and parted at the gate.