The envelope also contained a sweetly happy, fluttery little note from Aunt Patience, saying she hoped they were well, and that she would try to be a good mother to the Rector’s four little boys.

The small white box contained two squares of wedding cake!

THE RUNAWAY GRANDMOTHER

(Reprinted by permission of The Globe, Toronto.)

George Shaw came back to his desolate hearth, and, sitting by the untidy table, thought bitter things of women.  The stove dripped ashes; the table overflowed with dirty dishes.

His last housekeeper had been gone a week—­she had left by request.  Incidentally there disappeared at the same time towels, pillow-covers, a few small tools, and many other articles which are of a size to go in a trunk.

His former housekeeper, second to the last, had been a teary-eyed English lady, who, as a child, had played with King George, and was well beloved by all the Royal family.  She had a soul above work, and utterly despised Canadians.  Once, when her employer remonstrated with her for wearing his best overcoat when she went to milk, she fell a-weeping and declared she wasn’t going to be put on.  Mr. Shaw said the same thing about his coat, and it led to unpleasantness.  The next day he found her picking chips in his brown derby, and when he expressed his disapproval she told him it was no fit hat for a young man like him—­he should have a topper.  Mr. Shaw decided that he would try to do without her.

Before that he had had a red-cheeked Irishwoman, who cooked so well, scrubbed so industriously, that he had thought his troubles were all over.  But one day she went to Millford, and came home in a state of wild exhilaration, with more of the same in a large black bottle.  When Mr. Shaw came to put away the horse, she struck him over the head with her handbag, playfully blackening one of his eyes, and then begged him to come and make up—­“kiss and forgit, like the swate pet that he was.”

Exit Mrs. Murphy.

George Shaw decided to do his own cooking, but in three days every dish in the house was dirty; the teapot was full of leaves, the stove full of ashes, and the floor was slippery.

George Shaw’s farm lay parallel with the Souris River in that fertile region which lies between the Brandon and the Tiger Hills.  His fields ran an unbroken mile, facing the Tiger Hills, blue with mist.  He was a successful young farmer, and he should have been a happy man without a care in the world, but he did not look it as he sat wearily by his red stove, with the deep furrows of care on his young face.

The busy time was coming on; he needed another man, and he did hate trying to do the cooking himself.

As a last hope he decided to advertise.  He hunted up his writing-pad and wrote hastily: 

“Housekeeper wanted by a farmer; must be sober and steady.  Good wages to the right person.  Apply to George Shaw, Millford, Man.”