D ear Margo, my angel child , Margo read. In a miasma of bewilderment, sorrow, and depression, her old nurse’s love, coming clearly through the pages of the letter, stole like balm into Margo’s battered heart. Oh, if only those loving arms were here now, what comfort they would bring. Even after all these years, Margo felt a rush of warmth toward the distant Kezzie and a very great yearning to lay her head on the withered bosom and feel the tender pats of consolation on her shoulder. With Kezzie, one never wondered about one’s acceptance, never had to deserve that acceptance, never doubted its steadfastness.

But Kezzie, growing old and infirm, was thousands of miles away, wrapped in the vastness that was the Northwest Territory, in one small district called, strangely, Bliss.

I could do with a little Bliss, Margo thought a trifle grimly, not certain that even the coming wedding would supply it. Perhaps it was just because Kezzie was there, perhaps it was her strange desire to flee the present circumstances, but Margo picked up the letter with a sigh, and, shaking her head as if to rid it of the impossible dream of Bliss, a dream that had often gripped her heart ever since Kezzie’s arrival there, read on.

For me, shut in with my aches and pains, time seems to stand still. At times, now that my Mary is well, I wonder what I am doing here. But, of course, I know there is no need for me anymore at Heatherstone . No need! Now, more than ever, there was a need for Kezzie at Heatherstone. Tears splashed the pencilled pages, tears for Kezzie and her feeling of uselessness, tears for herself, Margo, and her feeling of helplessness. Two great needs—so far apart, with no chance of fulfillment.

Yes, my Mary, to the uninformed, is well. Those of us who know her, however, know that she is not strong. And that is hard for me, when I can do so little anymore to help. Dear Molly is such a blessing. As you know, she is about two years older than you and has been raised here on the frontier. I guess you could call it the frontier, but we have come a long way. The railroad has made a great difference. Unfortunately it does not come through Bliss but bypasses us for another route to Prince Albert. That growing little city is about twelve miles from us, too far to run in often but close enough to be available for many things not stocked here in our small Bliss store .

The letter drooped in Margo’s hand; she pictured again, as across the years of Kezzie’s letters, the area called Bliss, in the heart of the bush. Margo had watched, in imagination, as Angus had cleared land, planted, harvested; Margo had lived through the exhaustion of threshing day vicariously and the long, lonely winter days of isolation. She had thrilled to the occasion of the chinook and its warming breeze; she had knelt, in imagination, to brush aside the snow and rejoice in the finding of spring’s first crocus.

Wistfully, through the written word, Margo had watched as Molly and Cameron, whom she could not remember in person, had grown from youth to maturity. Almost she could see Cameron’s thick, fair hair and blue eyes and Molly’s tossing mane, as black and curly, it seemed, as her own. Margo could picture their injuries, described by Kezzie, laugh at their predicaments—Cameron learning to ice-skate in skates too large, stuffed with paper; Molly determined to ride a calf. She studied the crude drawing of the log cabin, coloring in new rooms as Kezzie reported their addition to the original structure. She studied the wisps of thread and scraps of material Kezzie sent, at Margo’s pleading, so that the child in the east could picture more completely the children in the bush and how they were clothed.

In imagination she had taken the buggy ride to Prince Albert for supplies, had bundled herself against the cold when the sleigh made the same trip. She had rejoiced with Bliss’s residents when, at a certain crossroads, a small hamlet had sprung up, with a post office, a store, a smithy, and, soon, a granary, and was named, appropriately, Bliss. None of Kezzie’s often vivid accounts of hardships, blizzards, discouragements, could change Margo’s impression of the place called Bliss. Until she could go to heaven, Bliss would do!

With her father lying dead in his coffin in the drawing room, with the weight of the family businesses hanging like an ominous cloud over her head, with the responsibility for the running of Heatherstone on her shoulders, and with Winfield waiting impatiently to become a bridegroom, Margo’s youthful dream of Bliss dissolved in the tears that now fell on Kezzie’s letter.

Molly, it seemed, as Margo resumed her reading, was in a fair way to marry the new, young minister who had come to the recently established church at Bliss. Cameron, Kezzie reported, was managing a superior farm just a few miles away in Bliss; he was, after all, in his mid-twenties. And still single , Kezzie wrote, as she had before. As you know, women here are hard to find—single women, I mean—and not everyone wants to become a pioneer bride. What’s more, Cameron seems to have this idea that God is going to send along the right one, and he needn’t worry about it. You see, Margo , and Margo could almost hear Kezzie’s frustration, this entire family has the idea that God is in control of things. I must say it makes for peace , even in trying times, and seems to give a contentment that I, for one, can’t really understand. But I would like to. The older I get, the more I need peace, Margo. But certain things go along with it—confession, for one. Well , another sigh, Margo supposed, some things are easier said than done . Now what, Margo thought, could darling Kezzie find so hard to confess, when she had been such a good woman? Hadn’t she been, since childhood, a staunch member of the Established Church? Dear Kezzie!

Margo finished reading her old nurse’s letter, folded it, and put it away until such time as it could be answered. Somehow she would have to make time before the wedding to write Kezzie and tell her of Hugh’s death, her forthcoming marriage. . . .

With a sigh equal to those of her faraway friend, Margo, with a wrench, put aside her dreams of someday visiting Kezzie and her family, laid aside, forever, any hope of a buggy ride to Bliss.