Eloise herself enjoyed these state occasions as a flower enjoys the sunshine. Ever at her father's side, taught by him, trusted by him, his companion and confidant, no wonder she repined at his long absence. The page of Telemachus lay untouched, the page she so oft had read at her father's knee; and, needle in hand, the fair bride emulated her mother in patterns of silk upon the pliant buckskin or the glossy broadcloth.
For Eloise McLoughlin was a bride; and the groom (so old voyageurs tell me) was the handsomest man at Fort Vancouver. Reserved, cordial, quiet, William Glen Rae was at bottom a scholar and a thinker. Six years had passed since he came from his ancestral home in the Orkneys, from Edinburgh College honors. His glance fell on the Lady of the Pacific Coast. The course of a life was changed. No doubt it was a wise provision on the governor's part that settled her marriage before his departure, to bind her heart with new ties, to end the rivalries that grew more pronounced from year to year. One young trader, who from the time Eloise was a little girl had joked and sung and danced to win her, was ready to fight on her wedding day. But the governor took him aside.
"Wait a bit, Ermatinger, wait a bit. When I come back I will bring you the fairest lily I can find in Canada. Then you shall have a wedding, too." Ermatinger stormed. For any other offence the governor would have shut him up in the butter-tub as they called the six-by-nine donjon where refractory engages were punished. As it was, Ermatinger betook himself to Bachelors' Hall and was seen no more till he left with Tom McKay's brigade for the Shoshonie, ten days later. He had not even come back in the autumn. But now it was said that surely he would come tc
