Although houses were so scarce, there was no lack of trade for the lonely store in the woods.  All through the summer there was a procession of birchbark canoes, filled with red men and white, coming down the river to the bay, laden with skins of wolf, fox, beaver, wolverine, squirrel, and skunk, the harvest of the winter’s trapping.  Then in winter the cove and the river were often crowded with boats, driven to anchorage there by the ice, and to escape the fearful storms sweeping over the bay.  The river was more favoured as an anchorage than the cove, because it was more sheltered, and also because there was open water at the foot of the rapids even in the severest winter, and had been so long as anyone could remember.

As the morning wore on, Katherine’s mood became even more restless, and she simply yearned for the fresh air and the sunshine.  She was usually free to go out-of-doors in the afternoons, because the boys only worked until noon, and then again in the evening, when it was night school, and Katherine did her best with such of the fisher folk as preferred learning to loafing and gambling in Oily Dave’s saloon.

Even Miles seemed stupid this morning, for he was usually such a good worker; while Phil was quite hopeless.  Both boys were bitten with the snow mania, and longing to be out-of-doors, in all the exhilarating brilliancy of sunshine, frost, and snow.  Noon came at last, books were packed away; the boys rushed off like mad things, while Katherine went more soberly across the store and entered the living-room, which was sitting-room and kitchen combined.

An older girl was there, looking too young to be called a woman, but who nevertheless was a widow, and the mother of the twin girls who were rolling on the floor and playing with a big, shaggy wolfhound.  She was Nellie, Mrs. Burton, whose husband had been drowned while sealing when the twins were twelve months old.  Mrs. Burton had come home to live then, and keep house for her father, so that Katherine might go to Montreal to finish her education.

“Did you see Father as you came through the store?” Mrs. Burton asked, as she rapidly spread the dinner on the table in the centre of the room, while Katherine joined in the frolic that was going on with the twins and the dog.

“No, he was not there,” Katherine answered.

“He wants you to go up to the second portage with him this afternoon.  Another boat got in this morning with some mails on board, and there are stores to be taken for Astor M’Kree,” said Mrs. Burton.

“That will be lovely!” cried Katherine, giving Lotta a toss up in the air, after which Beth had to be treated in a similar fashion to prevent jealousy.  “I am simply yearning to be outside in the sunshine and the cold.  I have been wishing all the morning that I were a man; then I could go off hunting, trapping, or even lumbering, and so breathe fresh air all day long.”