Days of Toil and Tears Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Kingston, Ontario, 1887

  May 1887

  June 1887

  July 1887

  August 1887

  September 1887

  October 1887

  November 1887

  December 1887

  January 1888

  February 1888

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Images and Documents

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Also Available

  Books in the Dear Canada Series

  Kingston, Ontario, 1887

  May 1887

  May 19, 1887

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  Make a joyful noise! I suppose in heaven you make joyful noises all the time, but make an extra one today. This morning Matron told me such good news that I hardly have the words to say how happy I am. I came right here to write to you in my notebook because if I write it down it will seem more real and fixed and not a dream. Matron had a letter from Auntie Janet. Auntie Janet had three pieces of news. The first thing is that she is married. The second thing is that she and her husband, whose name is James Duncan, have secured jobs in a big woollen mill in a town called Almonte. The third and most wonderful thing is that they have a place to live and they want me to leave Kingston and come and live with them, and work with them at the mill.

  When Matron told me I managed to contain myself, but as soon as I was alone (I ran around to the vegetable garden) I cried with joy. I thought of all those joyful noises in the psalms, the sounds of harps and psalteries and timbrels. I do not exactly know what those instruments sound like, but I imagine it to be the sound inside the heart of a girl who has just found out that she will no longer live in the Protestant Orphans Home because she has a real family waiting for her. Rejoice!

  Then I went inside to pare parsnips for dinner. Even parsnips for dinner cannot darken such a day.

  May 20

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  Today I woke up early. The coal man was delivering and he is a big yelling sort of man, even before dawn. I almost turned over and went back to sleep when I remembered my news. Why waste time sleeping when I could lie awake being happy?

  I took out my box of treasures. Best of the treasures are six letters from Auntie Janet, one for every birthday since I came to the Home, every one saying that she would love to have me with her, one day, when she had a home and a living. And now that one day has come.

  I started to think about families. All the children here tell stories about their families, the families they remember, the families who are going to collect them some day. Most of these stories are made up. I know that because I make them up myself.

  Every night, after prayers and before I go to sleep, I make up a day with you. Some things I make up from things I remember. Papa, you sing about Annie Laurie whose throat was like a swan. Mama, you hop your fingers up my arm and recite a verse about a rabbit. You have little half-moons on your fingernails. You hold buttercups under my chin and say that I like butter. We have a dog called Laird, who runs around in circles in the snow chasing his own tail. When he trips over his feet we all laugh at the same time. One night there is a thunder and lightning storm. Laird and you, Mama, are afraid, but Papa and I are brave. We love lightning.

  Some things in my made-up day are the might-have-beens. We live in a house all on our own, just our family. There is a garden. Sometimes I have brothers and sisters. I find names for them in the Bible. Jeroboam and Timothy and Zillah.

  The biggest might-have-been in my story is that nobody ever gets sick and dies.

  Matron sometimes says that we are a family in the Home. She especially says this when the patrons come to visit. But we all know that it isn’t true.

  But even with my memories and my made-up stories I do not really know what families are like. I know about moments, but not moments knitted together into days.

  I thought of families in stories — stories about princesses and fairies. Princesses have families, of course — kings and queens. But mostly they seem to spend their time forbidding things or making up contests for the princess’s hand in marriage. The stories don’t tell about eating dinner or having rows. Fairies don’t seem to have families at all. The Holy Family is a bit better because at least Joseph had a job, being a carpenter, and they went travelling and Jesus went to school and they had troubles, but no brothers and sisters and it is not quite the same, being Holy.

  At church and when I go to the shops for Matron I like to look at families. Here is what I have noticed: Fathers are sometimes harsh. I hope Uncle James Duncan is not a harsh man. Sometimes brothers are very kind and sometimes they are horrid. I have never heard a mother or a father tell a child that he should be grateful to be in the family the way Matron tells us that we should be grateful to be in the Home. I wondered about families until it was time to get up.

  May 21

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  Today I told Alice my news. It was hard. We have been friends from the very day she arrived here. It seems as though even the best news has some part in it that is sad, and leaving Alice behind is the sad part. But she was happy for me and skipped right over the sadness to a story in which she shrinks herself to the size of a fairy and goes with me in my pinafore pocket. One of the best things about Alice is that she doesn’t think that eleven is too old for fairies.

  May 22

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  In church today, in the middle of the sermon, I suddenly missed you very much. I often miss you in church because it is a place for thinking about heaven and also because I remember sitting between you in church and hearing both your voices say the prayers together. The remembering was like a flood. I started to think about going to live in a new place and I was pulled back to the time just after you died when I was sent to live at the Home. This feeling is not sensible because now I am happy as happy can be to be going to a new place, and then I was in a great despond. But sensible or not, I had to look very hard way up to the church ceiling so the tears did not spill over.

  May 23

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  It is early. I did not sleep well last night. Harriet was coughing. When I hear coughing I think of pleurisy and that is the worst word I know. I remember when they told me you had both been “taken by pleurisy.” I thought pleurisy was a kind of monster. Now that I am grown I know that it is a sickness, but in the night, in the dark, I still think of that monster when I hear coughing.

  I will think of something happier, like seeing Auntie Janet.

  May 24

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  Auntie Janet sent me some money. She wrote that James Duncan wished me to have some pocket money for my journey. I think James Duncan must be like a fairy godmother. I suppose he would be a fairy godfather, but I have never heard of such a thing. I know exactly what I will buy with the money. When next I go to the store for Matron I will get it.

  Matron says that I will be leaving on Friday. How can I wait three days? Hurry up, Friday!

  May 25

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  Time is crawling like a worm. I am thinking of worms because John C., who loves to torment me, threw a worm at me yesterday in the garden. He expected me to shriek, but I am not troubled by worms, not after having to mind so many horrid little boys. Three new ones in the Home this year and each one worse than the last. I am supposed to make them mind, but they will not. I will not miss this task for a minute. Alice tells me that she is practising her shrinking so she’ll be ready to come.

  May 26

  Dear Papa and M
ama,

  Tomorrow morning I leave. Last Christmas, at the party, we had cakes sprinkled with tiny candies that Matron called hundreds and thousands. I feel like that now, a mixture of many bits. I am excited, joyful, afraid and sad too. I will miss Alice most of all, and Mary Anne and Harriet and Ellen. I will miss Cook, who is kind even when she is grumpy. I gave Alice my bead bracelet as a keepsake. Tonight the Bible reading was Psalm 148, which is a list of things praising the Lord. Sun and moon, fire and hail, creeping things and flying fowl. My favourite verse is “Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps.” I think this is a good sign.

  May 27

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  I am writing this on the train. You can see what I bought with my pocket money — this new notebook and three new pencils. The page is so clean, like new snow, and the pencils smell lovely.

  The train feels much faster than it looks when you are standing watching it. It is so fast that you cannot even see near things like fences and grass. They just turn into a blur of colour and if you really try to look at them your stomach turns upside down. For a time a horse in a field galloped beside us, but we were faster. I pretended that I was on that galloping horse, racing the train. Then I pretended that I had magic boots and was running alongside the train myself, running like the wind.

  Sitting across from me is a very kind and pretty lady. She has a work basket with her and when she opened it up I could not help staring. Inside were skeins and skeins of embroidery cotton in every rainbow colour, and some colours not even in the rainbow. She began to work on a fancy cloth, with purple and yellow pansies. She asked me if I did embroidery and I said no. Matron thought that good plain stitching and knitting were all we needed to learn. Then the kind lady asked me if I would like to learn. I don’t know if it was proper to say yes, but I could not help myself. So she lent me a needle and some beautiful sky-blue cotton and a scrap of cloth and taught me how to do stem stitch, the lazy daisy stitch and French knots. With these three stitches I made some cunning little flowers. She lent me some scissors shaped like a long-billed bird. I like embroidery very much. It is so much more pleasant to make stitches that you want to see — unlike hemming where you are supposed to have invisible stitches. The kind lady inspected it, paying special attention to the back, and said that it was well done and that I was a quick study.

  Then she said why didn’t I embroider some flowers on my pinafore. At first I thought to say no, that I was not allowed to, and then I had a most bouncing thought. Matron will never know. Would Auntie Janet mind? She was not there to ask. I hesitated and the kind lady said that I must not worry, the cotton was boil-fast and the colours would not run so that no harm could come of it. She said I could use any colours I liked and that made up my mind for me.

  I took off my pinafore and embroidered a line of flowers along the top of the bib. The flowers are pink, mauve and blue and the leaves are two kinds of green and the French knot middles are yellow and white. It is truly the prettiest thing I have ever worn. In between these sentences I reach up and touch it — the French knot middles are little bumps — and then I tuck my chin under and look at my own garden. I wish Alice really was in my pocket.

  I long to see Auntie Janet, but I also want this train ride to go on forever. Nobody to take care of, no chores, nobody wanting anything, nobody getting into trouble, nobody to please but myself. But I must get off at Brockville and get on another train.

  Later

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  The train from Brockville had a big surprise. We left the station and then we were plunged into utter darkness, like at the beginning of the Bible, where darkness is on the face of the deep. I could not help crying out and a voice said, “Do not distress yourself. It is just a tunnel.” I was happy to come out into the light of day.

  Back to my garden.

  May 28, in the morning

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  It is Saturday morning and I can hardly believe that I am here. I woke up to the sound of a child crying. I was on my feet, thinking that it was little Jessie with her toothache, before I remembered that I wasn’t at the Home. The crying sound was coming through the wall. Then I heard a woman’s voice, not the words, but the sound of it. The crying has stopped now. It is early still, just a hint of daylight. No sound of Auntie or Uncle. I do not want to go back to sleep, to miss the first morning in my new home, newest morning of my whole life.

  Today I am a new person. At the Home I was Flora Rutherford, orphan, or Flora Rutherford, child-minder. Now I am Flora Rutherford, niece. I did not sleep very much last night. First of all I kept waking up for the pleasure of waking up, in my own snug. (That is what Uncle James calls it, Flora’s snug.) I do not ever remember sleeping in a room by myself. Nobody snuffling, nobody whimpering. And I thought it would be the quietest night of my life, but — not at all! It was the noisiest night of my life because of the trains. The first time the train whistle blew I thought it was going to come right into the house. It was that loud and close! But I don’t mind. A train is a friendly noise once you know what it is. And Auntie Janet says that I will get used to it and sleep right through the noise.

  But I am jumping forward. I want to tell you what happened yesterday,

  As the train left Carleton Place and the conductor announced, “Next station Almonte,” my heart began to fail me. I started to fret about what was coming, how my aunt and uncle are strangers to me. I thought about all the things I do not know, such as how to live in a family, how to do the work in a mill. I even started to fret about the embroidery on my pinafore. At that moment if a magic fairy had said to me, “Do you want to fly back to the Home?” I would have said yes. I am not a shy or timid girl, but I suddenly felt as though I might be.

  Such fretting drained away when Auntie Janet hugged me at the train station. She hugged me and then she held me away by my shoulders for a minute and studied me, as though she were reading me, and then she said that I look just like my mother. Then her eyes got wet and shiny. Then a handsome young man with black curly hair appeared and it was Uncle James. He took off his cap and bowed very low and said, “Welcome, Lady Flora,” and I didn’t know if he was mocking me. But Auntie Janet laughed and said, “Oh, go on with you, you daft silly,” and she told me that he was always like this and that I wasn’t to mind him.

  It was a very short walk from the station to the place where Auntie Janet and Uncle James live. I suppose I must say where I live now. The building is three stories tall and our rooms are on the second floor. There are two rooms. One is a kitchen and sitting room, and a little curtained-off corner for me. The other is a bedroom. The bathroom is downstairs and we share it with the other people who live in the building. In the sitting room there is a stove, a woodbox, a sink with a shelf above, and a dresser for crockery. There is a table and three chairs. In my corner there is a bed and a hook for my clothes and a box under the bed for my things. There are pretty things to look at — two fancy teacups, a tatted cover for the table, a picture of flowers on the wall and a rag rug. I told Auntie Janet about the embroidery lady on the train and she admired my pinafore and said that she will teach me how to tat and make rag rugs if I like.

  Auntie Janet made tea and then she and Uncle James told me a bit about the mill, the Almonte Woollen Mill. Auntie is a spinner and Uncle is a weaver. I am to be a doffer girl, which is something in the spinning room with Auntie, but I couldn’t quite understand what. They told me that it is the largest woollen mill in Canada and that the worsted cloth they make has won prizes for quality. Auntie Janet said that the Prime Minister might be wearing a suit that she helped to make. “Yes,” said Uncle James, “if it were not for Janet and me, Sir John A. Macdonald might be going around wrapped in a sheepskin!”

  I asked if we would go to work tomorrow, but Uncle James said the mill owner, Mr. Flanagan, had declared a holiday because Lady Flora had come to Almonte. Then Auntie Janet pretended to punch him in the arm and said that the mill was closed for
one day while they replaced some machinery, but that it was lucky timing because it gave them a chance to welcome me.

  Last thing. I was writing in my snug corner when Auntie Janet put her head round the curtain. She asked me what I was writing. I’ve never told anyone about these letters to you because I feared I would be mocked, so I thought to say that I was writing a journal. But I did not want to lie to her, when she is so kind to take me in, so I just told her. She smiled and said wasn’t I clever to be able to write such long letters. She said that she found writing hard and that made me even more grateful for the letters she sent me.

  Uncle James piped up and said, “You wrote plenty of letters when we found out that Flora was coming.” Auntie Janet looked shy and said, “Well, I wanted to share the good news with all the family.” Then she kissed me goodnight, which was surprising and nice. I wonder if she will do that every night? I am not accustomed to kissing. There was not much kissing at the Home. Only the bread man with the lumpy red nose and greasy hair who tried to kiss me when he brought the bread in the morning. I didn’t like that one bit.

  So the first thing I have discovered about families is that there is teasing, but not mocking.

  One more last thing. The nicest thing about Auntie Janet is the way she smells. That sounds disrespectful, but I mean that she smells lovely.

  There’s another train coming through, rattling the walls. What will today be like?

  Still May 28, in the evening

  Dear Papa and Mama,

  If there were a pleasanter day to be had I cannot think what it would be. Auntie made porridge for breakfast and it had no lumps, which is something that Cook at the Home could not manage. I was helpful with stirring and washing up and fetching water. I am determined to be very helpful. I started to sweep, but then Uncle said it was a holiday and we should leave off sweeping and go out and introduce me to the town.

  The first thing I got introduced to and got introduced to me was a neighbour. As we came out the front door there was a boy shooting marbles against the wall. He jumped up and said, “At last! Are you Flora?” Uncle James laughed and said that the boy was Murdo Campbell and that the Campbells are our neighbours.