They walked up the hill in silence, despite the desire for company which both had felt, and stood together at the top, watching the silver glory of the moon coming up over the black pine trees, with no speech at all until Mary asked with a ring of envy in her tone:  “What has come to you to-night?”

Katherine flushed, answering in quick apology:  “Please forgive me.  It is fearfully rude of me to be so silent and abstracted.”

“It wasn’t that.  Speech is only one way of expressing one’s thoughts, and very often not the most eloquent way either.  But you look so light-hearted to-night; it shines from your eyes, and—­and—­well, it is awkward to express what I mean, but it is visible in every gesture.  To put it briefly, you look like a person to be envied.”

“I believe I am to be envied,” Katherine answered, flushing again under the amused scrutiny in Mary’s glance.  “Everyone who has health and vigour, with an infinite capacity for enjoyment, should surely be envied by those not equally blessed, don’t you think?”

Mary sighed.  “I have health and vigour too.  I am not so sure about the infinite capacity for enjoyment; but I like work, and plenty of it.  Do you know, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Seal Cove to-day.  I went out on the landing wharf to help the men to count the take, then I entered it, wrote out the tokens, and worked as hard as if I were doing it for a weekly wage.”

“Well?” There was gentle questioning in Katherine’s tone, but no curiosity; happily there was need for none.  She could understand something of Mary’s moods without explanation now, and could give the sympathy, which was also better expressed without words.

“It isn’t well; that is the trouble of it,” Mary said wistfully.  “The work is all very well while it lasts, but when it is done, one is tired, and there is nothing left but weariness and moods again—­just these and nothing more.”

“Oh yes, there is!  You are leaving out the most important thing; there is rest.  And when one is rested, really rested, the world is all new again for a time,” Katherine answered brightly.  She was speaking now from her own experience, for that was how she had felt when her trouble was at its blackest.

“I had forgotten rest; but then it won’t always come, sometimes sleep is impossible.”  Mary sighed again, for to-night her mood verged on the morbid.

“Sometimes, but not often, when people are as healthy as we are,” Katherine replied with a laugh; then, slipping her hand through Mary’s arm, with a persuasive touch she drew her homeward.  “Come!  People who have to get up and work in the morning must go to bed at night, or suffer next day.  I am fearfully sleepy, and to-morrow I have to go over to Fort Garry with all those furs which your father did not buy.”

“I too must be at work in good time, for I want to be at Seal Cove before ten o’clock, and that does not leave much space for one’s housekeeping duties,” Mary said, in a brighter tone, as the two came down the hill together.