“Well, I guess we can’t be moving afore the end of May.  My missus expects to be confined the fore part of the month, and I shan’t move till she be quite smart agin.”

“You are not using us well, in keeping us out of the house so long.”

“Oh, I don’t care a curse about any of you.  It is my house as long as I choose to remain in it, and you may put up with it the best way you can,” and, humming a Yankee tune, he departed.

I had borne patiently the odious, cribbed-up place during the winter, but now the hot weather was coming, it seemed almost insupportable, as we were obliged to have a fire in the close room, in order to cook our provisions.  I consoled myself as well as I could by roaming about the fields and woods, and making acquaintance with every wild flower as it blossomed, and in writing long letters to home friends, in which I abused one of the finest countries in the world as the worst that God ever called out of chaos.  I can recall to memory, at this moment, the few lines of a poem which commenced in this strain; nor am I sorry that the rest of it has passed into oblivion:—­

  Oh! land of waters, how my spirit tires,
    In the dark prison of thy boundless woods;
  No rural charm poetic thought inspires,
    No music murmurs in thy mighty floods;
  Though vast the features that compose thy frame,
  Turn where we will, the landscape’s still the same.

  The swampy margin of thy inland seas,
    The eternal forest girdling either shore,
  Its belt of dark pines sighing in the breeze,
    And rugged fields, with rude huts dotted o’er,
  Show cultivation unimproved by art,
  That sheds a barren chillness on the heart.

How many home-sick emigrants, during their first winter in Canada, will respond to this gloomy picture!  Let them wait a few years; the sun of hope will arise and beautify the landscape, and they will proclaim the country one of the finest in the world.

The middle of May at length arrived, and, by the number of long, lean women, with handkerchiefs of all colours tied over their heads, who passed my door, and swarmed into Mrs. Joe’s house, I rightly concluded that another young one had been added to the tribe; and shortly after, Uncle Joe himself announced the important fact, by putting his jolly red face in at the door, and telling me, that “his missus had got a chopping boy; and he was right glad of it, for he was tired of so many gals, and that he should move in a fortnight, if his woman did kindly.”

I had been so often disappointed that I paid very little heed to him, but this time he kept his word.

The last day of May, they went, bag and baggage, the poor sick Phoebe, who still lingered on, and the new-born infant; and right joyfully I sent a Scotch girl (another Bell, whom I had hired in lieu of her I had lost), and Monaghan, to clean out the Augean stable.  In a few minutes John returned, panting his indignation.