A halt was called at Forteau for a few hours’ conference with one of the remarkable women who have put their shoulders under the load of the Labrador—Sister Bailey, once a co-worker with Edith Cavell. At Forteau she has a house that holds an immaculate hospital-ward and an up-to-date dispensary. For twelve years—except for two visits in England—she has held the fort here without the company of her peers, except at long intervals. She has kept herself surrounded with books and flowers, and her geraniums are exquisite. Sister Bailey’s cow, bought for $40 in a bargain at Bonne Esperance (“Bony,”) is a wonder, and I took pains to stroke the nose of this “friendly cow” and praise her life-giving endeavours. For each day at the crack of dawn there is a line-up of people with all sorts of containers to get the milk. The dogs, of course, would cheerfully kill the animal if they could pull her down, but she fights them off with her horns, and they have learned a wholesome fear. She is not like the cow at Bonne Esperance today, which has suffered the loss of part of its hind quarters because it was too gentle. Under Sister Bailey’s roof three maids, aged 12, 13 and 22, are being educated in household management. She has a garden with the dogs fenced out, and there is a skirmish with the weeds all through the summer into which winter breaks so suddenly. There is no spring; there is no fall; flowers, vegetables and weeds appear almost explosively together. Artificial flowers are beautifully made—with dyes from Paris—by the girls of Forteau Cove, under Sister Bailey’s supervision. The hues are remarkably close to the original and the imitation of petal and leaf is so close as to be startling. [Illustration: ST. ANTHONY HOSPITAL IN WINTER.] [Illustration: SOME OF THE HELPERS.] No description of Dr. Grenfell’s “parish,” as Norman Duncan aptly styled it, could be complete without mention—that would be much more extended did she permit—of the part Mrs. Grenfell fills in all that the Doctor does. Mrs. Grenfell was Miss Anna MacClanahan, of Chicago, and she is a graduate of Bryn Mawr. The Doctor went to the Labrador years before his marriage, but since she took her place at his side with her tact, her humour, her common sense, her sound judgment and her broad sympathies, she has been a tower of strength, a well-spring of solace and of healing, and altogether an indispensable factor in her husband’s enterprise. She is his secretary, and the number of letters to be written, of patients’ records to be kept, of manuscripts to be prepared for the press is enormous. The Doctor pencils a memorandum when and where he can—perhaps sitting atop of a woodpile on the reeling deck of the _Strathcona_; and then Mrs. Grenfell tames the rebellious punctuation or supplies the missing links of predicates or prepositions and evolves a manuscript that need not fear to face the printer.