Dear Readers: I got the idea for this Vignette from a review that one of the readers had posted for Vignette 6: Wedding Dust. For those of you who may be veterans, wives of veterans, or children of veterans, maybe you weren't given written "Rules", but I'm sure that most of the basic Rules in this story will seem familiar to you. Enjoy!

VIGNETTE 7 - THE RULES OF BEING A MOUNTIE WIFE

Chapter 1

Rule number 1: Make every house, however despicable, a warm and cozy home.

Rule number 2: Learn to make friends quickly (provided there are other people around).

Rule number 3: Remember that you have something special to add to every person you meet (this helps when making new friends, see rule number 2)

Rule number 4: Be prepared for times when you'll be alone.

Rule number 5: Learn to adapt to new customs and foods. (Bear can be substituted for deer in many meals, and dried animal dung can be burned as a heat source, but save this as a last resort for warming a home. See rule number 1.)

Rule number 6: Don't get attached to material things (they're likely to get broken, lost, or take up too much space when you frequently move).

Elizabeth sat down on the edge of her bed, holding in her hand the written advice from other Mountie wives, and sighed.

Married life was not like she expected.

She certainly hadn't planned that she and Jack would be sleeping in the room next to Clara and across the hall from Abigail.

That was the problem: they hadn't planned. She and Jack had gotten married so abruptly two weeks earlier that they hadn't remembered until after the ceremony that they didn't have a place to live as husband and wife. Now they were sleeping on two single beds pushed together in Elizabeth's old room above the Café, and Jack was fully frustrated.

"Two days of honeymooning is not enough. We need privacy", he moaned for the tenth time in as many days as he moved around the bed, gathering his clothes for the morning.

How am I supposed to follow Rule number 1 and make every house a warm and cozy home when we don't even have a home yet?, Elizabeth thought with exasperation.

"How's the cottage coming along?", she asked, folding up the paper of Mountie Wife rules and returning it to her dresser drawer as she pulled out her undergarments.

"Three more days. Maybe four. . . . It can't come soon enough. I want to be able to walk out of my bedroom without having to be fully dressed and worried about bumping into someone. I'll meet you downstairs."

When Elizabeth had first seen the small cottage on the edge of the woods which Lee had offered to have some of his men fix up, she had been less than enthusiastic. She hadn't complained when her foot had broken through the plank of rotten wood; she had merely looked up the leaking ceiling above it as Jack offered her his hand and helped her out of the hole her foot had created.

And she hadn't complained, but merely raised her eyebrows and looked pleadingly at Jack, when she saw that the outhouse didn't even have a door.

But she hadn't been able to contain a scream from escaping her mouth when a mouse had run across her foot in a hurried attempt to get to its nest of baby mice in the corner of the kitchen.

Jack had assured her that the cottage would be a fitting home. She thought about suggesting that they wait until one of the former coal company homes became available, but she agreed with Jack; not only was her room at Abigail's crowded for the two of them, but she missed the privacy which they had enjoyed for two days at the hotel after their wedding.

Since they had been back at Hope Valley, Jack had gone to bed each night and frustratingly complained that he wanted to touch his wife without falling between the pushed together mattresses or worrying that half the town would hear them.

As she finished dressing and then went to join Jack in the kitchen for Abigail's food, Elizabeth thought about her and Jack having their own home soon, snuggled together in their own big bed, waking up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and a warm breakfast. She paused when she got to the last step. Wait a minute, who's going to be making the coffee and breakfast if we're both snuggled in bed?!

"Elizabeth, everything okay? You're just standing there", Jack asked in a puzzled voice when he looked up from the newspaper and saw her standing on the stairs.

"Fine. I was just thinking", she said quickly. Breakfast? He's going to expect a nice breakfast every morning! I'll have to get up even earlier, before him! , she thought with dread.

Suddenly her eyes spotted the parcel and letters on the table. "Ooh, is that mail? I didn't get a chance to go pick it up yesterday."

As Jack got Elizabeth a cup of coffee, she opened the parcel, and read the letter from her mother, who informed her that they were sending her several more parcels of wedding gifts on the next train. Hmmm, I'll have to tell her that we won't have a terribly big home, she thought before turning her attention to the Hamilton Press, which her mother had enclosed.

"There it is!", she exclaimed happily to Jack as she read the announcement to herself before handing the paper to him.

Setting down his cup of coffee, Jack casually picked up the paper and looked to the open page.

"What?", he inquired as he looked at the paper.

"Our wedding announcement!"

"I don't see it", he remarked looking at the page of announcements.

"On the other page!"

"Why isn't it on the society page?"

"There were too many to fit on one page. Look . . . half are on the opposite page."

"So our marriage announcement is on the same page as an article on tornados, an article on a train derailment, and an advertisement for a traveling circus?. . . . How appropriate", he said with raised eyebrows and a smirk.

Elizabeth gave Jack an exasperated look, and noticed that Abigail, having overheard Jack's comment, was trying to stifle a laugh as she walked by their table.

A week later, a gift from her parents arrived by wagon after having traveled by train to the nearest train station, where it waited until it could be transferred onto a wagon that could accommodate it to Hope Valley.

When Jack saw the size of the rug, he looked at her quizzically.

"Your family doesn't understand this whole Mountie lifestyle, do they?"

Elizabeth giggled. "No, I suppose they don't. Mother also sent a letter asking if we needed 8 or 10 place settings of china."

Jack rolled his eyes in disbelief.

"Don't worry! I'm telling her not to order any."

"Well, there's nowhere to fit this rug in our house. We'd have to knock down a wall between the front room and bedroom, and even then then it will spill out the front door onto porch."

"It's not that big!" Elizabeth exclaimed in defense of her mother's gift.

It may not have been as large as Jack's exaggerated statement, but it was too big for any room in the house so the couple finally decided to move the rug to the school.

The children loved the thick and colorful rug which was much more intricate than the simple rag rugs and braided rugs that covered the plank wood floors of their homes. Every afternoon before the end of the school day, they would gather on the rug as Elizabeth read to them. At first they had sat politely on the rug, unaccustomed to being so relaxed in a school room, but soon they had begun to stretch out, some laying on their stomachs with their hands propping up their chins, others laying on their backs with their heads resting on their hands as they stared at the ceiling and daydreamed about being one of the characters in the stories which Elizabeth read to them about wondrous places and people.

While the children quickly took to the new tradition of story time on the rug, some of the mothers of Hope Valley were less enthusiastic. One week after the rug arrived, they sat around their quilting circle, and discussed their latest complaint about the town's teacher.

"She needs to stop reading that book. Peter had a nightmare two nights in a row. Yesterday, he thought he saw a tiger on his way from school. He swore he saw it off in the distance."

"Jane thought she heard one growling. She refused to sleep in her own bed."

"Well, someone needs to tell Mrs. Thornton to stop reading those stories! The Jungle Book! I don't even understand half the silly names. Who ever heard of such nonsense?! I'm busy enough without having to deal with children's wild imaginations. "

"I think the animals are supposed to represent various qualities that humans may have and teach a moral", one of the mothers spoke up defending Elizabeth.

"That would explain the spelling list this week. Has anyone seen it yet? Regulation, principle, responsibility, morality, acceptance", Mary's mother remarked.

"They're supposed to be learning reading, writing, and arithmetic so they can get jobs, not laying around on a rug learning about the jungle and silly animals ", another mother retorted as she reached for more thread.

". . . but learning morals and rules also", Mrs. Grady countered quietly under her breath. She hadn't forgotten how Elizabeth had helped her son overcome what she had called "word blindness". If Elizabeth, who had taught Bo how to read using simple cookie dough, wanted to read stories to the children on a rug, Mrs. Grady was not going to disagree.

While Elizabeth was busy using stories to teach students rules of conduct, she was about to learn how hard it was to follow her own set of rules, those given to her by the other Mountie wives. The only rule which Elizabeth had given any considerable thought about was making a warm and cozy home for her and Jack. Oh, poor naïve Elizabeth. That was just the beginning of her lessons.