The day passed in a feverish round of incessant work.  One hour Katherine was happy as of old, the next hour she was horribly heartsick and oppressed.  But it never once occurred to her that the reason for this was her exhausted condition from loss of rest on the previous night.

In the evening Jervis came up from Seal Cove, sat and talked with ’Duke Radford for half an hour, then asked Katherine to come and walk with him in the woods to see if the wild strawberries were getting ripe.  But she refused, declaring that her head ached, which, although true, was not the real reason by any means.

“I am afraid you have been working too hard this week,” he said kindly.  “I have been very much in the same plight myself, or I would have come up to help you.  Can you save things back for a few days?  As soon as the steamer has gone I shall be quite at leisure, and will put in a day or two at helping you to get your stores stowed away.”

“It has been hard work, and of course we are to a certain extent novices at it,” Katherine answered.  “But the worst is over now until the next boat comes, when I suppose the confusion will begin all over again, only of course by then we shall be more used to managing things.”

“You had better go to bed early and get a good night’s rest, or I shall be having you for a patient next, and I am very much afraid you would not prove a tractable one,” he said, more troubled by her pale cheeks and weary looks than he cared to confess.

“I have never been ill in my life, so I have no idea how the role of invalid would suit me,” she answered with a mirthless laugh, thinking how very pleasant a stroll in the woods would have been after her long, hard day of work in the stockrooms.

“I don’t think it would suit you at all,” he replied.  Then he said, as he rose to go:  “As you are not inclined for a walk, I will go and have a talk with Mr. Selincourt about the plans for the fish-curing sheds.”

Standing aside was dismal work, Katherine told herself; and there were tears on her pillow when she went to sleep that night.

CHAPTER XIX

An Awkward Fix

Mr. Selincourt was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet when he had any sort of project in hand.  He was so rich, too, that his schemes never had to suffer delay from want of means to carry them through.  Directly he had made up his mind that he meant to have a fish-curing establishment at Seal Cove, he had the plans drawn for the buildings, work which fell to Jervis and Mary; then, when these were ready, Astor M’Kree was set to work, with as many helpers as could handle a hammer or a saw with any degree of dexterity.

Never had there been such a summer of work at Seal Cove; everyone who could do anything was pressed into service.  Some of the Indians, tempted by wages, were set to work, and although they were no good at carpentry, or things of that sort, they did very well at cod-splitting, or, as it was termed, “flaking”, and spreading the fish to dry on the flakes, as the structures were called which had been erected on a sunny headland, after the fashion of the fish-flakes at St. John’s, Newfoundland, whence the idea was taken.