“Which would have been a great shame, for I am sure that you must have been tired out.  Besides, you would have been too late, for Mr. Ferrars sailed for the Twins last night with the evening tide; and I have got to be clerk and overseer whilst he is away, so I must be off.  Don’t you wish me joy of my work?”

“I certainly hope that you will enjoy it,” Katherine replied, and Mary went off in a bustle, calling for Hero, who was her constant companion morning, noon, and night, a sort of hairy shadow, and devotion itself.

When she had gone, Katherine sighed a little, then said to Miles, who still looked a trifle sullen:  “I do wish it had been possible for you to go to the city this autumn.  I know Father wished it so much, and here would have been a good opportunity for your journey, because you could have gone with the Selincourts, then you would not have felt so lonely.  I know that I nearly broke my heart when I went, because of feeling so solitary.”

“I am very glad that I can’t be spared, because I simply don’t want to go, and should not value the chance if I had it,” Miles answered.  “I will settle to work at books again directly winter comes, and will put as much time in as I can spare at them, especially at book-keeping.  Education is not much good to people who don’t want it; and I would rather work with my hands any day than work with my head.  But of course there are some things I must know to be a good man of business, and these I can learn at home, I am thankful to say.”

Katherine dropped the sugar scoop with which she had been shovelling out brown sugar, and, crossing over to where Miles was standing, gave him a hearty hug and a resounding kiss.

“What is that for?” he asked, with a wriggle of pretended disgust, although there was a lifting of the sullen look in his face.

“Because you are such a thoroughly good sort,” she answered.  “You have been such a comfort, Miles, ever since Father was taken ill; it was just as if you went to bed a boy and woke up a man.”

When the boys had been started off to Seal Cove with a boatload of goods, and Katherine had tidied away the litter in the store, she went into the stockroom at the back to spread out the furs in readiness for the coming of Mr. Selincourt.  In an ordinary way she would have taken them over to Fort Garry to-day, but with the prospect of a customer they could wait for a more convenient time.

She was still busy spreading out and arranging pelts of black fox, white fox, silver fox, beaver, skunk, and racoon (there were wolfskins in plenty, too, but these she did not produce, as they were commoner, and so would doubtless not appeal to the rich man’s fancy); then she heard a noise of knocking in the store, and, running out, found that Mr. Selincourt and an Indian had arrived together.

Neither of them was in the slightest hurry.  But Katherine attended to the red man first, being desirous of getting rid of him, then watched him down the bank and waited until he had embarked in his frail canoe before attending to her other and more important customer.