Chapter 40.
February 12th 1889, brought us a fresh treasure in the person of our eldest son, George Christopher. How charmed we were to have a son. A dear old woman, Mrs. Girt, cared for me at the time and she was such a good nurse that I got quite well and strong. Now that we had two children as well as a tract depot, we felt we must have a place of our own. Jack wanted a store, that our books might be sold more easily, and after a time one was found on Yonge Street between Wellesley and Isabella. It was a long building, big enough to hold twice our little stock of books, but we divided it into two by tall book cases. Above it was the house, containing a kitchen and double parlour on the first floor, and three bedrooms above. It was all new and very light, with plenty of cupboards. Altogether it seemed to us a very homey little place.
Ethel Sydney had been helping us with the books for some time past and she came with us to the new house. We moved early in the spring and soon got comfortably settled. There was a good deal of work, between running up and down the long flight of stairs to the store, often just to answer a child asking if we had a card to give away, minding the two little children and doing the work of the house, and it was not very long before Ethel was tired out and went home. After that I got a servant and did all the depot work myself. This was increasing all the time. We sent out a large number of magazines, which was a great business. Dora or Sophie nearly always came up to help, and the baby learned he must sit in his carriage while it was going on.
I think it was in September that Mrs. Gausby and her daughters were just moving to Toronto, and were very glad to come and stay in our house while looking about for suitable quarters, while we accepted an invitation from Mrs. Ord to use her house in Rosedale for two weeks, while they went to the Island. It was a pretty house and at that time quite in the country, as Rosedale was only just beginning to be built up. Dorothy’s great delight was the nursery at the top of the house, and there she would stay alone, playing with the old toys the little girls had left behind. My mother came up to be with us and was taken ill for a day or two. Dorothy sat on her bed and remarked: “Tisses and Dod will soon make you well.”
Christopher was a very bonny baby, so fair and smiling. I must not forget to mention that he was a subject of Miss Toose’s special prayers, as an infant, and she wrote a little poem about him. She was a dear, bedridden saint, and I have always felt how much our dear Christie owes to her prayers.
To go back a little, it was during the early part of this summer that our brother Lord Adelbert Cecil was drowned. He fell out of his little sail boat and the inexperienced man at the helm did not succeed in reaching him before he sank. Mrs. James Cartwright was spending the afternoon with me when we got the news and we mourned over it together.
Mrs. James Cartwright had left her pretty house in “The Home” garden and was living in Isabella Street. Her father and mother had also moved from the old “Home” and were in a house on Beverly Street. She had lately returned from England with Mildred, who had been to school there, and she also brought back a Miss Young, one of the teachers in the school, and greatly admired and beloved at that time by Mildred.