"A little New England homestead strangely set up here on this far Western island," William Douglas had said.
The church house, as the villagers named it, was built by the Presbyterian missionaries, many of them laboring with their own hands at the good work, seeing, no doubt, files of Indian converts rising up in another world to call them blessed. When it came into the hands of Miss Priscilla, it came, therefore, ready-made as to New England ideas of rooms and closets, and only required a new application of white and green paint to become for her an appropriate and rectangular bower. It stood near the closed meeting-house, whose steeple threw a slow-moving shadow across its garden, like a great sun-dial, all day. Miss Lois had charge of the key of the meeting-house, and often she unlocked its door, went in, and walked up and down the aisle, as if to revive the memories of the past. She remembered the faith and sure hope that used to fill the empty spaces, and shook her head and sighed. Then she upbraided herself for sighing, and sang in her thin husky voice softly a verse or two of one of their old psalms by way of reparation. She sent an annual report of the condition of the building to the Presbyterian Board of Missions, but in it said nothing of the small repairs for which her own purse paid. Was it a silent way of making amends to the old walls for having deserted their tenets?
"Cod-fish balls for breakfast on Sunday morning, of course," said Miss Lois, "and fried hasty-pudding. On Wednesdays a boiled dinner. Pies on Tuesdays and Saturdays."
The pins stood in straight rows on her pincushion; three times each week every room in the house was swept, and the floors as well as the furniture dusted. Beans were baked in an earthen pot on Saturday night, and sweet-cake was made on Thursday. Rast Pronando often dropped in to tea on Thursday. Winter or summer, through scarcity or plenty, Miss Lois never varied her established routine, thereby setting an example, she said, to the idle and shiftless. And certainly she was a faithful guide-post, continually pointing out an industrious and systematic way, which, however, to the end of time, no French-blooded, French-hearted person will ever travel, unless dragged by force. The villagers preferred their lake trout to Miss Lois's salt cod-fish, their savory stews and soups to her corned beef, their tartines to her corn-meal puddings, and their eau-de-vie to her green tea; they loved their disorder and their comfort; her bar soap and scrubbing-brush were a horror to their eyes. They washed the household clothes two or three times a year: was not that enough? Of what use the endless labor of this sharp-nosed woman with glasses over her eyes at the church-house? Were not, perhaps, the glasses the consequences of such toil? And her figure of a long leanness also?