A Countess from Canada eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 357 pages of information about A Countess from Canada.

A Countess from Canada eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 357 pages of information about A Countess from Canada.

Katherine could not forbear a grimace as she spoke, for peltry can be a very odorous currency, and she had to examine every skin closely before deciding what it was worth in flour, bacon, or tobacco, because the red man is a past master in the art of outwitting the white man, when it comes to a question of trade.

“The plan of bartering skins for stores is not a good one, and the man who buys the skins ought not to be the one who sells the sugar and tea,” Jervis remarked in a dictatorial tone; but Katherine only laughed at him, and said that he knew nothing whatever about the red man of the Keewatin wilds, or he would never suggest cash dealings.

“Still it will come, and the red man will be educated to a proper appreciation of his privileges,” Jervis maintained, with the quiet obstinacy that Katherine had sometimes noticed in him before.

“I hope I shall be out of the trade before that time comes,” she said, as she guided the boat in to the landing place.  “As soon as Miles is able to take control of the store I shall return to my proper avocation of school teaching—­that is, always providing there are children to be taught.”

’Duke Radford sat in a cushioned chair at a sun-shiny window of the kitchen.  He looked up with a smile when his daughter entered the room, and when she bent over him to kiss him he murmured:  “Pretty Katherine”, and stroked her face caressingly; then he turned with the pleased eagerness of a child to greet Jervis, whom he regarded as a very good friend indeed.

Katherine sighed as she went back to help with the unlading of the boat.  It was a great comfort to feel that her father suffered nothing either in body or mind, but sometimes she would have been very thankful if she could have gone to him with her business worries, and got his advice on things which perplexed her so much.  However, it was something to be thankful for that his burden of apprehension was lifted so completely, and the thought of this banished her tendency to sighing, bringing the smiles back instead.  Life might be hard, but while there was hope in it, it could not be unbearable.

CHAPTER XIII

Mary

“Are you ready, Mary?”

“In one minute, Father.  Let me see:  three bags, a valise, a hold-all, a portmanteau, two hatboxes, a camping sack, a case of books, and a handbag.  Oh dear, what a collection of things to look after!  How I wish we were like the dogs, dear creatures, which grow their own clothes and have only their tails to hold up, or to wag in sign of amity!”

The speaker was a girl of perhaps twenty, although she had one of those quiet reserved faces which render difficult a correct guessing of the age.  She was standing in the porch of the Bellevue Hotel, Temiskaming, and was garbed as if for rough travel, in coat and skirt of heather-brown cloth, faced with brown leather, with a brown hat on her head, and brown boots on her feet which reached well above the ankle.  Indeed her attire was so trim, and so exceedingly suitable for rough work, that everyone at the first glance decided she must be English.

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A Countess from Canada from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.