“Does that mean that Mrs. M’Crawney is ill again?” Katherine asked.

Peter shrugged his shoulders.  “She is desperate uneasy in her mind, poor lass, and as hard to live with as a houseful of mosquitoes, which it is lucky I haven’t got, or I should be forced to drown myself to keep from going out of my mind.”

“Not so bad as that, I hope,” Katherine said with a laugh, and instantly resolved that it would be her duty to stay an hour with the poor woman, who pined so much because of the solitude in which her life was cast.

“It is pretty bad anyhow,” he growled, a frown coming over his face.  He was a fairly patient man, all things considered, but his domestic tribulations were greater than anyone knew or even guessed at.

Katherine turned an anxious eye towards the sky before going in at the house door.  If she could start back in anything under a quarter of an hour she might hope to go as she had come, with not much extra labour nor fatigue; but an hour or perhaps an hour and a half hence it would be very different.  The storm was coming slowly, but when rough weather came like that it had a trick of lasting sometimes for several days.  However, if the worst came to the worst, she could always skirt the shore, and, consoling herself with this thought, she entered the house, leaving M’Crawney and Phil to unload the pelts and bring them up from the boat.

The miserable, neglected look of the house struck Katherine first.  Peter was not great at housework, while the half-breed, Simon, who lived with them, helped with the trapping in winter, and did a little of all sorts of work, was rather less clean and tidy in his ways than even Peter.  The sight of the dusty, ill-kept room irritated Katherine.  Last night’s supper dishes still littered the table, and had probably served for breakfast dishes as well.  What was the use of wasting her time in trying to console a woman who so neglected her home, and the privileges of home-making that came with it?  For a few minutes she felt disposed to turn back with only a five minutes’ civil talk.  But there was one’s duty to one’s neighbour—­and that is a more important duty in isolated places than in more crowded centres.

Then an idea flashed into her mind.  If by any means she could contrive to make Mrs. M’Crawney ashamed of herself, it might be more useful than medicine, might even work a cure, in fact; and that would be something worth doing, even though it entailed skirting the shore all the way home.  To think was to act.  Whisking off her coat and hat, she rolled up her sleeves, and for want of an apron pinned a big towel round her; a very dirty towel it was too, but something she must have to protect her frock, and it had to be the towel or nothing.

First, with plenty of noise and clatter, she piled the dirty crockery ready for washing, and, filling the stove with wood, set a kettle of water on to get hot.  This done, she flung door and window wide, and proceeded to sweep the room.  By the amount of dust she raised she judged that it must have been at least a week, perhaps a fortnight, since it was swept last.