Page:Through South Westland.djvu/276

170 feared. “I never see Macpherson go, but I pray he may come back safe; and when I’m expecting him, I’m out there on the point every minute watching till I see his horse come over the creek. And the creeks are nearly as bad. I had another little girl, and once when the floods were coming, down she ran after her father, and her foot slipped on the plank over the creek, and she was carried away! Her father’s deaf, and he never heard her cry; and we found her when the creek went down.”

The tears were in her eyes, and I felt how ill she could spare one out of her little flock. Her husband made a sad journey with his little one, to bury her in consecrated ground, but the mother stayed behind with the other children.

“Why,” she went on, “only this summer, when baby was born, I had someone come up to be with me, and it was five weeks before the river let her get away again!”

“And when the children are ill, do you see a doctor?” I asked.

“Doctor! there’s never been a doctor here! It’s not so long since I thought I had lost her there”—pointing to a little fair girl of three. “Her father was away; there was no one but myself and the children here; and she was the baby then. She had been eating the matches when my back was turned, and I was just distracted to know what to do—leaving the house and all, and only the three children, and them babies, you might say, to take care of it.