fter it
with a quite cherubic smile, and ask if it were the same oil as Elisha
gave the widow woman!

Whatever can survive in this land of difficulties survives with a zeal
and vitality which only proves the strength of the obstacles overcome.
The flies, the mosquitoes, and the rats are proofs. We have none of
your meek little wharf rats here. Ours are brazen imps, sleek and
shameless, undaunted by cats or men. Their footmarks are as big as
those of young puppies (withal not too well-fed puppies), and their
raids on man and beast alike ally them with the horde Pandora loosed.
Each day the toll mounts. One morning Miss Perrin, the head nurse,
awakened to find one of her prize North Labrador boots gnawed to the
rim. All that remained to tell the tale was the bright tape by which
it was hung up, and the skin groove through which the tape threads.

[Illustration: THEY ATE THE ENTIRE BOOT]

On the next occasion of their public appearance the night nurse was
summoned by agonized shrieks to the children's ward. A large rodent
had climbed upon Ishimay's bed and bitten her. There were the marks of
his teeth in her hand, and the blood was dripping. Nor do they limit
their depredations to the hospital. The barn man turned over a bale of
hay last week and disclosed no less than twenty-seven rats young and
old, fat and lean, though chiefly fat. I rejoice to record that this
galaxy at least has departed Purgatory-wards. The dentist left a whole
bag of clean linen on the floor of his bedroom. The morning following
he found that the raiders had eaten their way through the sack,
cutting a series of neat round holes in each folded garment as they
progressed. The scuffling and the squealing and the scraping and the
gnawing and the scratching of rats in the walls and cupboards are
worse than any phalanx of "Yohos" ever summoned from spookland! Oh!
Pied Piper of Hamelin, why tarry so long!

_December 14_

The last boat of the season has come and gone and now we settle down
to the real life of the winter. Plans innumerable are under way for
winter activities, and the children are on tiptoe over the prospect of
approaching Christmastide. Their jubilations fill the house, and
writing is even more difficult than usual.

For days before the last steamer finally reached us there were
speculations as to her coming. Rumour, a healthy customer in these
parts, three times had it that she had gone back, having given up the
unequal