“It is a good thing for us that you are not really a doctor, or else you would not be looking after Mr. Selincourt’s fishing interests, and then you would not have been here to take care of Father,” Phil said.

Katherine laughed as she remarked:  “For pure, unadulterated selfishness that would surely beat the record, Phil.  I expect Mr. Ferrars hates Seal Cove nearly as much as he did the Nantucket whaler.”

“No, he does not,” Jervis broke in.  “Sometimes of course Seal Cove smells rather strongly of fish oil, warm blubber, and putrid seal meat; but, taken as a whole, there are many worse places to live in.  I found a bank gorgeous with anemones in blue and red yesterday, and that within ten minutes’ walk of the fish shed.”

“I know it,” said Katherine.  “That bank is always a beautiful sight; but wait until you have seen the rhododendrons on the long portage.”

“Where is that—­at Astor M’Kree’s?” asked the young man, whose time was too much occupied to admit of much exploration of the neighbourhood.

“No, four miles farther up the river, and the portage is a mile and a half long.  Phil and I call it the backache portage,” replied Katherine.

“Why, do you deliver goods so far out?  With no competition to be afraid of, I should have thought you might have made your customers come to buy from you,” he said, frowning, for he knew very well what kind of work was involved in a portage, and it did not seem to him a fit and proper employment for a girl.

“But there is competition,” laughed Katherine.  “There is Peter M’Crawney, with all the great Hudson’s Bay Company behind him.  That is our most formidable rival, while up on Marble Island there has been started a sort of United States General Stores and Canned Food Depot.  Of course, that is eight hundred miles away, and should not be dangerous, but it makes more difference than anyone might suppose.”

“Well, it isn’t round the corner of the next block at any rate,” Jervis replied, laughing to think that trade could suffer from a rival establishment so far away.

“Yes it is, only the block is a big one, you see,” she answered, and they all laughed merrily.  When one is young, and the sun is shining, it is so easy to be gay, even though grim care stalks in the background.

“I thought that you and M’Crawney were rather in the position of business partners than trade rivals,” Jervis said, as, passing the last bend of the river, he swung the boat along the stretch of straight water to the store.

“In a sense we are partners; that is, we agree to work together, and to supply each other’s shortages in stores so far as we can.  But the rivalry is there all the same.  Peter M’Crawney knows he would sell three times the stuff that he does now if it were not for us; while of course our hands would be freer but for him, only we are tied to him, because half of our customers are able to pay us only in skins, and then Peter M’Crawney is our Bank of Exchange.”