ng. Betsey, who was with her father,
would be anxious to be home early, and she must not leave her father
alone, though she would like to stay.

"Well, you know best, and we winna spoil the time you're here by teasing
you about staying longer. So sit you down here by the fire and warm
your hands, though you look anything but chilled and cold. Your cheeks
are like twin roses."

Elizabeth thought of Betsey's dismissal of her and laughed.

"My drive has done me good."

She stayed a good while and enjoyed every minute of it. It was a great
rest and pleasure to listen to Mrs Fleming's cheerful talk, with
Katie's quiet mother putting in a word, and now and then Katie herself.
Neither Katie nor Davie were at the school this winter. The studies
that Davie liked best he would have had to go on with alone, even if he
had gone, and he liked as well to get a little help from the master now
and then and stay at home. But he had not much time for study. For he
had taken "just a wonderful turn for work," his grandmother said, and
much was told of the land he was clearing and the cord-wood he was
piling for the market. Katie brought in a wonderful bee-hive he had
made, to show Miss Elizabeth, and told her how much honey they had had,
and how much more they were to have next year, because of Davie's skill.
Davie had made an ice-house too, for the summer butter--a rather
primitive one it seemed to be as Katie described it--on a plan of
Davie's own, and it had to be proved yet, but it gave great satisfaction
in the meantime. And the frame of the new dairy was lying ready beside
the burn to be put up as soon as the snow melted, and the water was to
be made to run round the milk-pans in the warm nights, and Katie, under
the direction of her grandmother, was to make the best butter in the
country. All this might not seem of much interest to any one but
themselves, but listening to them, and watching their happy, eager
faces, Elizabeth, who had more than the common power of enjoying other
people's happiness, felt herself to be refreshed and encouraged as she
listened, especially to what was said about Davie. The troubles of the
Flemings would soon be over should Davie prove to be a prop on which, in
their old age, they might lean.

"He is wonderfully taken up about the work, and the best way of doing it
just now, and I only hope it may last," said Mrs Fleming, and then
Katie said, "Oh, grannie!" so deprecatingly that they all