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Sometimes it was firm, when Christie, as she not unfrequently did, ventured to resist it; but gentle never. When Christie's mother died, all their friends said the little Redferns were very fortunate in having an Aunt Elsie to supply her place in the household; and in some respects they were.
Day by day they seemed to be drawing nearer to a change which all saw, but which none had courage to name. The neighbours came and went, and spoke hopefully to the awed and anxious children; but they were grave, and said to one another that the poor young Redferns would soon be fatherless.
Sunday came, and, in spite of Christie's forebodings, the day rose bright and beautiful. The kirk which the Redferns attended lay three long miles from the farm. The distance and the increasing shabbiness of little garments often kept the children at home, and Christie, too, had to stay and share their tasks.
So, when two or three years had passed away, the glances which the neighbours sent into the future of the Redferns revealed by no means so dreary a prospect as formerly. A change for the better had come over Christie, too.
The evenings were always bright. There was no danger of being dull where Mrs Nesbitt's merry boys were. Her family consisted of four sons. John, the eldest, was just twenty-three though, for some reason or other, the young Redferns were in the habit of thinking him quite a middle-aged man.
A quiet walk in the garden, or in the nearest field, was the utmost that was permitted in the way of amusement; and though sometimes the walk might become a run or a romp, and the childish voices rise higher than the Sunday pitch when there was no one to reprove, it must be confessed that Sunday was the longest day in all the week for the little Redferns.
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