a fine pepper-pot there'd be when Isabella's hasty tongue and temper
were flung into that batch!"

There was no gainsaying all this. Nevertheless, Isabella married John,
went home with him into his father's house, put her shoulder against her
spoke in the family wheel, and did her best. And when, ten years later,
as reward of her affectionate trust and patience, she found herself sole
mistress of the McDonald farm, she did not feel herself ill paid. The
old father and mother were dead, two sisters had died and two had
married, and the two sons had gone to the States to seek better fortunes
than were to be made on Prince Edward Island. John, as eldest son, had,
according to the custom of the island, inherited the farm; and Mrs.
Isabella, confronting her three still unmarried sisters, was able at
last triumphantly to refute their still resentfully remembered
objections to her choice of a husband.

"An' did ye suppose I did not all the time know that it was to this it
was sure to come, soon or late?" she said, with justifiable complacency.
"It's a good thing to have a house o' one's own an' an estate. An' the
linen that's in the house! I've no need to turn a hand to the flax-wheel
for ten years if I've no mind. An' ye can all bide your times, an' see
what John'll make o' the farm, now he's got where he can have things his
own way. His father was always set against anything that was new, an'
the place is run down shameful; but John'll bring it up, an' I'm not an
old woman yet."

This last was the unkindest phrase Mrs. John McDonald permitted herself
to use. There was a rebound in it which told on the Mclntosh sisters;
for they, many years older than she, were already living on tolerance
in their father's house, where their oldest brother and his wife ruled