But Miles, who had stumbled perilously near to an indiscretion, plainly thought better of it, and ventured on no more speech concerning the matter, calling instead to one of the men standing outside the door to ask some question about goods which had been ordered for the next day, and had to be sent down to Seal Cove.

Katherine went to bed in a very mixed frame of mind that night.  At one moment she was sorry that she had not been at home when Mr. Ferrars came to see her; then, with a quick revulsion of feeling, she was heartily glad that she had been away, and shrank with very real reluctance from the thought of the next time she would have to see him.  But that would not be for another week; a good many things might happen before then, though she did not even guess how many were going to happen.

In the morning Mary came over to the store very early indeed, and her face was in a pucker of dissatisfaction and discontent.

“It is so truly horrid of things to fall out like this,” she began vehemently, bursting into the store, where Katherine and Miles were busy weighing and packing goods which had to be delivered that day.

“How have they fallen out?” asked Katherine with a smile.  She was used to Mary’s excitable outbursts, which were usually about trifles too small for notice; but this was a bigger matter.

“The men came up with the mail yesterday; the delay was owing to a breakdown on one of the portages, and they had to camp for a whole week whilst they were repairing their boat.  It is very vexing, coming as it does just now, because we should have known our fate so much earlier.  We have to go back to Montreal for the winter, and it is so tiresome!” sighed Mary.

“I’m afraid you won’t get much pity for your hard fate,” laughed Katherine, with a lightening of heart which made her secretly ashamed of herself.  “I found Montreal very pleasant for winter quarters, and I only wish it were possible for us to spare Miles to go for this next winter.”

“I don’t want to go!” interposed Miles hastily.

“Neither do I, Miles,” said Mary; “so we are both in the same boat.  Only the worst of it is I have got to go, whether I like it or not, because my father will not leave me here without him.  Such nonsense!  As if I were not old enough to take care of myself!”

“Which you are not.  Remember the tidehole,” Katherine remarked, in a tone of mock solemnity.

“Once bitten, twice shy!  No more tideholes for me,” Mary answered, with a shake of her head.  Then she went on:  “I have brought over some newspapers for Mr. Radford, but there was no public mail matter in this lot except some English letters for Mr. Ferrars which had come directed to our agent in Montreal; so we sent them straight down to Seal Cove yesterday afternoon without troubling the post office at all.”

“That was very kind of you.  If they had been sent here I should have had to deliver them last night after I got back from the long portage,” Katherine answered, as she took the bundle of papers which Mary put into her hand.