" That was the way quarrels always ended between Isabella
McDonald and her oldest daughter.
The oldest daughter, and yet only just turned of twenty; and there were
eight children younger than she, and one older. This is the way among
the Scotch farming-folk in Prince Edward Island. Children come tumbling
into the world like rabbits in a pen, and have to scramble for a living
almost as soon and as hard as the rabbits. It is a narrow life they
lead, and full of hardships and deprivations, but it has its
compensations. Sturdy virtues in sturdy bodies come of it,--the sort of
virtue made by the straitest Calvinism, and the sort of body made out of
oatmeal and milk. One might do much worse than inherit both.
It seemed but a few years ago that John McDonald had wooed and won
Isabella McIntosh,--wooed her with difficulty in the bosom of her family
of six brothers and five sisters, and won her triumphantly in spite of
the open and contemptuous opposition of one of the five sisters. For
John himself was one of seven in his father's home, and whoever married
John must go there to live, to be only a daughter in a mother-in-law's
house, and take a daughter's share of the brunt of everything.
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