Another Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

your egg money?” It
was custom for the money they received from selling eggs to be
spent at Harriet’s discretion.
    “Don’t trick me with that nonsense, Allan
MacDougall. The hens haven’t laid eggs all winter!”
    Allan’s eyes twinkled with
mischief. “Well, let’s just say they had...”
    With a teasing smile, he withdrew a length of green
calico from one of the crates.
    “Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” Maggie cried.
    George shrugged in disdain. “It’s just cloth.”
    “There’s enough for new dresses for both my girls,”
Allan said, and Maggie clapped her hands in delight.
    “You shouldn’t have,” Harriet said
in reproof, but her eyes were warm with love and she couldn’t
resist smoothing one hand over the material. “Thank you,
Allan.”
    After the children were in bed, it was Harriet and
Allan’s custom to share a cup of coffee by the fire. Normally it
was bitter stuff made from chicory or dandelion, but after a trip
to town they were able to enjoy some of the precious ground
beans.
    “I stopped by Mother and Father’s,”
Allan said quietly. Even though their farm was adjacent to the
older MacDougalls, in winter they barely saw them at all, due to
the heavy snows and fierce storms.
    “Are they well?” Harriet asked, and Allan nodded
thoughtfully.
    “Mother looks as if she’s gained
some of her strength back. Father insisted she rest most of the
winter, thankfully.”
    “And Rupert?” Rupert was Allan’s
younger brother. He’d been living at Mingarry Farm since he
travelled over with Harriet ten years ago.
    “A bit restless, I’d say,” Allan said slowly.
    “It is that time of year. A boy like Rupert can
hardly stand to be cooped up indoors for months on end!”
    “He’s twenty-three years old, hardly a boy.”
    “Too true,” Harriet agreed. “The
time does slip by, doesn’t it?”
    “It does, although it’s going
slowly for Rupert, I warrant. He won’t stay at Mingarry forever, I
shouldn’t think.”
    “But your father needs him!”
Harriet protested, shocked. “Why, you know how he relies on him.
Even after he hired on a man, there was too much to do. And he’s
getting older...” she trailed off, thinking of Sandy, proud and
white haired, with affection.
    “He is.” Allan gazed into the fire.
“But he can’t tie Rupert to the land, no more than he could tie
me.”
    “But you came back,” Harriet reminded him softly.
“This land is in your heart, Allan. Why sometimes I think the very
soil is a part of you!”
    “Aye, it is. But perhaps it’s not so for
Rupert.”
    Harriet was silent. Admittedly Rupert was different
than Allan. Allan had always been quiet, a thinker. Rupert was more
impulsive, full of energy that could never quite be suppressed...
or perhaps, satisfied.
    “What would he do?” Harriet asked after a long
moment when the only sound was the crackling of the fire. “Leave
the island, as you did? Become a fur trader?”
    Allan shrugged and stretched his
legs. “He’ll have to discover that for himself. But the fur trade
has moved farther and farther away... even in just the last ten
years the game’s become terribly scarce. And I don’t know if that
sort of solitary life is for Rupert. Truth be told, it wasn’t for
me after the first few months. If I hadn’t found you...”
    Allan smiled at his wife with deep affection. He
also remembered well the moment in a broken down shack on the
prairies near Red River, when Harriet had gazed at him down the
barrel of a shotgun. With his bushy beard and fur cap, she hadn’t
recognised him, even though he'd seen her, trembling with
determination and fear, in joyous disbelief. Then he'd wrestled the
shotgun from her, and pulled her into an embrace neither of them
had ever forgotten.
    “Perhaps you could invite Rupert to stay with us for
a spell, once the planting’s over,” Harriet suggested. “A change of
scene, however small, might do him good, and I know he enjoys the
children.”
    “A fine