The Able Mclaughlins by Margaret Wilson — Read

The autumn seemed to set itself against the house that Wully had determined to have ready for occupancy before winter. Week after week the roads continued so deep in mud that six oxen could not manage to haul a load of lumber the mere twenty-six miles. Chirstie was not as much disappointed by the delay as her husband; she rather liked being hidden away, just then, on the outskirts of the settlement, in her father's lonely cabin. She had seen no one but Wully's mother, and her aunts into whose chagrined ears the humbled Isobel McLaughlin had poured a story as sympathetic as possible, blaming Alex McNair for this fruit of his unfatherly desertion. Mrs. McLaughlin had come at once to see Chirstie after Wully's revelation, apparently utterly pleased over the prospect of a grandchild, never intimating by a syllable that she saw anything deplorable in the unchristian haste of his advent. Her kindness had naturally humbled the girl more than any reproof could have done, and after a long cry the two had been friends, both relieved that estrangement was a thing of the past.

One afternoon late in November Mrs. McLaughlin came as far as Chirstie's with her husband, who was going on to the Keiths' on an errand. It seemed to Chirstie then, and often afterwards, that one who had not seen loving-kindness incarnate in her mother-in-law, had never seen it at all. Her own mother had been a sad, repressed woman, well-loved, indeed, by her children, but as far different as possible from this great, cordial, brimming woman, who seemed so capable of anything that might ever be required of her. One couldn't imagine her hesitating, complaining, broken in spirit.