"My wife and I had been only married two months when we went out," said he, with a smile at the remembrance. "We did not know what we were going to."
"Would you have gone had you known?" I enquired as we paused in our walk to take in a view of the Mersey we were leaving behind.
"Yes, I think so. Yes, I am quite sure we would. I was an Oxford man, country-bred; my father is still alive, and has a small living in Essex. I was imbued with the idea of doing something in the colonies long after I was comfortably settled in an English living myself, but I had always fancied it would be Africa. However, just at the time of our marriage I was offered this bishopric in Canada, and my wife was so anxious to go that I easily fell in with the plan."
"Anxious to go out there?" I said in much surprise.
"Ah! You don't know what a missionary in herself my wife is! Then, of course, young people never think of the coming events--children and all that you know. We found ourselves one morning at three o'clock, having gone as far as there was any train to take us, waiting in a barn that served as a station for the buckboard to take us on further to our destination. Have you been in Canada yourself? No? Then you have not seen a buckboard. It consists of two planks laid side by side, lengthwise, over four antiquated wheels--usually the remains of a once useful wagon. Upon this you sit as well as you can, and get driven and jolted and bumped about to the appointed goal. I remember that morning so well," continued the Bishop. "It was very cold, being late in November, and at that hour one feels it so much more--3 a.m., you know. There was one man in charge of the barn; we called him the station-master, though the title sat awkwardly enough upon him. He was a surly fellow. I never met such another. Usually the people out there are agreeable, if slow and stupid."
"Oh, frightfully slow. A Canadian laborer is the slowest person in existence, I really believe. However, this man would not give us any information, except to barely tell us that this buckboard was coming for us shortly. It was pitch dark of course and the barn was lighted by one oil lamp and warmed by a coal stove. The lamp would not burn well, so my wife unstrapped her travelling bag and with a pair of tiny curved nail scissors did her best, with the wick, the man remaining perfectly unmoveable and taciturn all the while. At four o'clock our conveyance arrived, and would you believe it--both the driver and the station master allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could? What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in my district where we were to stay until our own house was ready."