How cold and desolate every object appeared!  The small windows, half blocked up with snow, scarcely allowed a glimpse of the declining sun to cheer us with his serene aspect.  In spite of the cold, several kind friends had waded through the deep snow to say, “God bless you!—­Good-bye;” while a group of silent Indians stood together, gazing upon our proceedings with an earnestness which showed that they were not uninterested in the scene.  As we passed out to the sleigh, they pressed forward, and silently held out their hands, while the squaws kissed me and the little ones with tearful eyes.  They had been true friends to us in our dire necessity, and I returned their mute farewell from my very heart.

Mr. S—–­ sprang into the sleigh.  One of our party was missing.  “Jenny!” shouted my brother, at the top of his voice, “it is too cold to keep your mistress and the little children waiting.”

“Och, shure thin, it is I that am comin’!” returned the old body, as she issued from the house.

Shouts of laughter greeted her appearance.  The figure she cut upon that memorable day I shall never forget.  My brother dropped the reins upon the horses’ necks, and fairly roared.  Jenny was about to commence her journey to the front in three hats.  Was it to protect her from the cold?  Oh, no; Jenny was not afraid of the cold!  She could have eaten her breakfast on the north side of an iceberg, and always dispensed with shoes, during the most severe of our Canadian winters.  It was to protect these precious articles from injury.

Our good neighbour, Mrs. W—–­, had presented her with an old sky-blue drawn-silk bonnet, as a parting benediction.  This, by way of distinction, for she never had possessed such an article of luxury as a silk bonnet in her life, Jenny had placed over the coarse calico cap, with its full furbelow of the same yellow, ill-washed, homely material, next to her head; over this, as second in degree, a sun-burnt straw hat, with faded pink ribbons, just showed its broken rim and tawdry trimmings; and, to crown all, and serve as a guard to the rest, a really serviceable grey-beaver bonnet, once mine, towered up as high as the celebrated crown in which brother Peter figures in Swift’s “Tale of a Tub.”

“Mercy, Jenny!  Why, old woman, you don’t mean to go with us that figure?”

“Och, my dear heart!  I’ve no band-box to kape the cowld from desthroying my illigant bonnets,” returned Jenny, laying her hand upon the side of the sleigh.

“Go back, Jenny; go back,” cried my brother.  “For God’s sake take all that tom-foolery from off your head.  We shall be the laughing-stock of every village we pass through.”

“Och, shure now, Mr. S—–­, who’d think of looking at an owld crathur like me!  It’s only yersel’ that would notice the like.”

“All the world, everybody would look at you, Jenny.  I believe that you put on those hats to draw the attention of all the young fellows that we shall happen to meet on the road.  Ha, Jenny!”