In the Land of the Long White Cloud

dog sniff the baby. Which is when she noticed a bouquet of spring flowers that someone had secured in Cleo’s collar.
    “How original!” remarked Francine as Gwyneira carefully freed the little bouquet. “Who do you think it was? One of the men?”
    Gwyneira knew exactly who it was. Though she said nothing, her heart ran over with happiness. So he knew about their daughter—and of course he had picked colorful wildflowers instead of cutting roses.
    The baby sneezed when the flowers brushed her nose. Gwyneira smiled.
    “I’m going to name her Fleurette.”

Something Like Hate
    C ANTERBURY P LAINS — WEST C OAST

1
    A fter his ascent up the Bridle Path, George Greenwood was lightly out of breath. He slowly drank the ginger beer sold at the highest point between Lyttelton and Christchurch, savoring the view of the town and the Canterbury Plains below.
    So this was Helen’s new homeland. This is what she left England for…George had to admit it was a beautiful country. Christchurch, the town near which he assumed her farm must be located, was supposed to be a burgeoning community. As the first settlement in New Zealand, it had received its charter last year and was now a bishopric too.
    George recalled Helen’s last letter, in which she reported with schadenfreude that the aspirations of the unkind Reverend Baldwin had not been fulfilled. The archbishop of Canterbury had instead called a pastor by the name of Henry Chitty Harper to the bishop’s chair, who had traveled from the homeland with his family expressly for that purpose. He seemed to have been beloved in his earlier parish, though Helen did not report anything else about his character, which rather surprised George. After all, he imagined that she must have long since gotten to know him from all the church activities that she was always writing about. Helen O’Keefe participated in ladies’ Bible circles and worked with native children. George hoped that she hadn’t become as bigoted and self-righteous as his mother through these activities. He couldn’t picture Helen in silk dresses at committee meetings, but her letters made it sound as though she spent most of her time with the children and their mothers.
    Could he still picture Helen? So many years had passed, and he’d had an endless stream of experiences since then. College, his travels through Europe, to India and Australia—those should have beenenough to erase the image of a much older woman with gleaming brown hair and clear gray eyes from his memory. Yet George could still see her before him as though she had left only the day before: her narrow face, her prim hairstyle, her erect gait—even when he knew she was tired. George remembered her well-concealed anger and her strenuously contained impatience when dealing with his mother and his brother, William, but also her secret smile whenever he succeeded in breaking through her armor of self-restraint with some impertinence. Back then he had read every emotion lurking within her—hidden behind the calm, equanimous expression she exhibited to the world. That fire, burning under still waters, which had flared up over some crazy advertisement from the other end of the world. Did she really love this Howard O’Keefe fellow? In her letters she spoke with great respect of her husband, who worked hard to make a comfortable life for her and to make the farm profitable. Yet George read between the lines that her husband didn’t always succeed. George Greenwood had been active enough in his father’s business to know that New Zealand’s first settlers had almost all become wealthy. Whether they focused on fishing, trade, or animal breeding, business was booming. Anyone who didn’t make an inept start of things turned a profit. Gerald Warden, the largest wool producer on the South Island, was a perfect example. Visiting him at Kiward Station was at the top of the list of activities that had brought Robert Greenwood’s son to Christchurch. The Greenwoods were considering opening a branch of their international trading firm here. There was growing interest in New Zealand’s wool trade, and steamships would soon be trafficking between England and the islands. George himself had already traveled on a ship driven by a steam engine in addition to traditional sails. No longer dependent on the capricious winds in the calm belt, the ship could now make the trip in just eight weeks.
    Even the Bridle Path had become less treacherous than what