A Place Called Bliss by Ruth Glover

aforementioned snowshoes. And did they need to buy snowshoes?
    “Come over for supper,” Sadie invited cordially, “and we’ll get better acquainted. It won’t be fancy,” she explained but without apology. “Not much fanciness here, seein’ as how everything has to be freighted in or handmade. You’d be surprised, though. There’s a piano or two and some very fine silver and dainty china that managed to make it through. But not at our house.”
    The Morrisons were welcomed to the LeGare log house with cheerful kindness, and they thoroughly enjoyed the fresh bread, so often missing on the trip, and the roast beef with fresh vegetables.
    The dessert was sweet strawberries with mounds of whipped cream. When Angus and Mary “mmmmmmed” their appreciation, Pierre LeGare, a short, dark man of undoubted Indian as well as French ancestry, quoted, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”
    Pierre LeGare was a freighter, “gone a lot of the time,” he admitted. He and Sadie were childless and took immediately to Cammie and Molly, sitting them down after supper to sorting through a box of arrowheads.
    Sadie and Mary settled themselves with a last cup of tea, and the men went for a walk, where Pierre told Angus, “The plow is the most important investment you can make. And a grub hoe and of course an axe or two or three. . . .”
    When, finally, the Morrisons left for their own camp, they felt they had made real friends. And in spite of the almost over-whelming list of things to buy, things to do, they were not discouraged, and only a little daunted.
    “Neighborliness goes beyond tolerance,” Angus mused, “and it is so freely offered. Pierre tells me that dislikes and likes, religious affiliations and political persuasions, though not stifled or forgotten, do not interfere with neighborliness or being accountable to one another. A good feeling, that.”
    “Cooperation—it seems to be incorporated into the building of the frontier. Sadie says there are working bees—”
    “As opposed to drones?” Angus asked, grinning through the late evening shadows.
    Mary smiled. “Bees where people come and help each other with their work, like putting up their buildings.”
    “And we’ll need to be quick to do our share.”
    “No locks on doors, Sadie says. Well, maybe on places of business but not on cabins out in the bush where someone might need to have shelter or food.”
    “It’s a whole new way of life, that’s for sure,” Angus said as he scooped a weary Molly up into his arms. “Give us two or three days, and we’ll be on our way.”
    “To Bliss.”

 
    L ike a bird on the wing Sophia flew up the stairs, the voluminous wrapper skirt drawn out of the way of her hurrying feet.
    For once she failed to take in and appreciate the charm of the nursery she had so lovingly and carefully designed, decorated, and furnished for her child. The walls were daintily papered, the windows were adequate to allow plenty of light. There was a rosy carpet on the floor, and cherub-figured lamps sat on cherry tables and hung from the ceiling. In one corner stood an intricately curled-iron bed. The sides were made to be let down; the pillars, or corner posts, were topped with brass rods, or vases, and it was fitted with a “superior wire-woven” mattress, covered now by snowy linens and frothy, lace-edged “comforts.”
    In the center of the room a handsome cherry cradle moved silently on its patented hangers, as promised by its builder. At its side, her hand resting on the cradle, sat Kezzie in a rocker of the finest curly birch, the seat upholstered in satin brocatell of a vivid blue, its back panels ornamented with heavily scrolledcarving now clearly seen as the old nurse leaned forward, her eyes on the child in the cradle.
    Sophia’s gaze was fixed on the cradle as she flew across the thick carpet.
    Margaret was asleep, or at least the long lashes lay dark on her flushed cheeks. When