76 The Humiliation of Joseph Keeler, Esq. 



It could not be said that John Keeler at first relished ban- 

 ishment from his city haunts; but he was not so far lost to 

 self-respect or mentally strong enough to resist his father's 

 suggestion, which amounted to a command, that he go down 

 with Fanny and make Ernest's first summer a pleasant one 

 on the "Farm." Thoroughly practical, Mr. Keeler knew that 

 John must be occupied, so only seemed surprised when Tom one 

 Saturday evening came speeding up the creek in a well-fur- 

 nished motor-boat, which he had run down in from Toronto 

 and which he told John he had brought so that he might keep 

 Fanny out all the pleasant days on the water of the Bay and 

 bring back the color to her cheeks. 



So it was not long before the change of scene, constant occu- 

 pation, with life in the open, motoring, fishing, and resting and 

 dreaming were not only doing marvels for Fanny, but were also 

 exerting their soothing, healing effects upon the prodigal son, 

 to whom came gradually some idea of his hitherto misspent 

 life, some sense of personal unworthiness and, with steadied 

 nerves, a growing determination to reform his ideas and habits 

 of life. To Fanny the days proved one long summer dream. 

 Coming in from a long ride in the sheltered cabin of the motor 

 boat, the delicate girl would go rested, though weary, to her 

 open tent pitched amid the cedars, which, grouped in little 

 clumps upon the warm light soil of the pasture field looking 

 over the beach, gave to the soft moist zephyrs from the lake the 

 balsamic odours from their sighing boughs. Then after an ap- 

 petite, long absent, had been appeased with a cream and egg 

 collation she would sleep, fanned by the summer breeze, and in 

 the cooler evenings enjoy the campfire parties, which the others 

 of the household had come to make on the gravel beach. Fanny 

 soon came to so love the spot, that first in the hot evenings, and 

 then gradually until every night she made the tent her habita- 

 tion and, wrapped in warm rugs, would enjoy unbroken slum- 

 bers soothed by the cadences of the waves lapping on the pebbled 

 shore. As her strength definitely increased, she began to wander 

 through the meadows and to visit the corn fields where Ernest 

 was daily busy with the men, cultivating the waving corn, and 

 soon she became interested in watching the varied crops in 

 their wonderful growth and the increasing splendours of the 



