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In their broad Scotch fashion they called this daughter Eelan, and the town knew her as 'Bonnie Eelan Reid'; everyone acknowledged her charms, although there might be some who would not acknowledge her preeminence. Mr. and Mrs. Reid carried their pride in their daughter to a great extent, for they sent her to a boarding-school in the town of Coburgh, which was quite two days' journey to the south.
'Tuts, father, Governors! said his wife scornfully, not because she had any inherent objection to Governors as sons-in-law, but because she usually cried down what her husband said. 'The chief difficulty would be that they are usually married before they come to this country aren't they, father? Eelan spoke with a twinkling smile.
It was great fun for the school children to scamper out daringly on these floating fields of lumber; and Eelan liked to go with them, and sometimes walk far out alone along the edge of the boom.
Where the waterfall had been there was a fairy palace of icicles glancing in the sun, and smooth white roads were made across the frozen lake. Eelan never drew back dazzled from the glittering landscape; she was a child of the winter, and she loved its light. She would often harness her father's horse to the old family sleigh and drive alone across the lake.
She would listen to the birds singing, the children shouting, to the whir of the saws in the mill, and the plash of the river falling over the dam; and she would feel that it was enough delight simply to live without distressing herself about marriage yet awhile. When winter came, Eelan was happier still. All the roughness and darkness of the earth was lost in a downy ocean of snow.
So the schoolmaster wrote 'Miss Eelan Reid' in a fair round hand, and then he paused for a moment. He was making up his mind to the all-decisive action. 'Perhaps you can wait for another note and take that for me at the same time, he said. He gave them some picture papers to look at.
Her parents had a vague notion that this manner of expressing herself was in some way a proof of her high accomplishments. Life was by no means dull in the little town. There were picnics in summer, sleigh-drives in winter, dances, and what not; and Eelan was no recluse.
That conversation happened when Eelan first came home; but a year or two after, the family conferences took a more serious tone. She had learnt to keep her father's books in the shop, and had become deft at housework; but there was no prospect of her settling in a house of her own; many of the best young men in the place had offered themselves as lovers and been refused.
When she came back from this educating process well grown, healthy, handsome, and, in their eyes, highly accomplished, the parents felt that there was no rank in the Canadian world beyond their daughter's reach, if it should be her pleasure to attain it. 'It wouldn't be anything out of the way even, chuckled the happy Mr. Reid, 'if our Eelan should marry the Governor-General.
'The girls in these parts are far too proud to be hired to work in a house. Why, the best folks in town mostly does their own work; there's Mrs. Reid, so rich, just has a woman to do the charing; and Eelan that's the beauty, you know makes the pies and keeps the house spick-and-span.
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