“Well, you won’t have to wait long, for here he comes, I fancy—­although it seems funny that I should remember his step after so many months,” said Mary, as a firm tread sounded on the path coming up through the bushes from the water’s edge.

“Is that you, Ferrars?” asked Mr. Selincourt eagerly, his sleepiness vanishing as if by magic.

“Yes, sir,” responded a voice, and the next moment Jervis Ferrars appeared in sight.

“I’m sorry that I was not on hand to welcome you when you arrived,” he said.

“No matter, no matter at all!” exclaimed Mr. Selincourt, shaking hands with him; but Mary only vouchsafed a nod in response to the young man’s courteous salutation.

“My welcome is only a little belated, but it could not be more sincere.  You have come just at the right time, I think,” Jervis went on; and at the suggestion of Mr. Selincourt the two sat down on the bench side by side, while Mary remained leaning against the doorpost as before.

“How is the fishing?” asked Mr. Selincourt.

“It is going very well indeed, and you will get a very good return for your money this year, and a much better one next season.  I have been away on Akimiski all day, and I have been simply amazed at the amount of fish which could be caught, cured, and marketed if only we had the necessary plant.”

“What sort of fish?  Everyone is saying that Hudson Bay is played out for seal and walrus, while whales are getting scarcer every year,” said Mr. Selincourt, who had bought out the old company cheaply because of this growing scarcity.

“That may be,” replied Jervis, “although, being a stranger to these waters, I’m not in a position to give a reliable opinion.  But of lesser fish, such as cod, halibut, lobster, salmon, and that sort of thing, there is enough going to waste to feed a nation.”

“I tell you what we will do!” exclaimed Mr. Selincourt.  “We will order the necessary plant, and we will start a curing factory.  Of course we are out of the world for nine months in every year, but that won’t make much difference in the end; and we got our fishing rights cheaply enough to enable us to make a very good thing indeed out of our venture before we have done.”

“Don’t you think it is rather grasping of you to want to make more money, Daddy, when you have got so much already?” broke in Mary, in a playful tone, yet with some underlying seriousness of purpose.

“Not a bit of it, my dear.  Because I have got some money should be no barrier to my getting more, if I get it honestly,” her father answered with soothing toleration; for Mary had ideas, and was apt to air them in rather unmeasured language when she was roused.

“It seems so ignoble to spend all one’s time and energy in making money when there are so many wrongs which need righting, and so many people who need helping,” she said, with a note of pathos in her tone.