t a long table, and the
hostesses serve; at six o'clock comes supper, and then the day's work is
done; after that a little chat or a ramble over the farm, and at eight
o'clock all are off for home. No young men, no games, no dances; yet the
girls look forward to the bees as their greatest spring pleasures, and
no one grudges the time or the strength they take.

It was, indeed, a big bee that Elspie McCloud was having this June
morning. Twenty young girls, all in long white aprons, were spinning
away as if on a wager when Donald and Katie appeared at the door. The
door opened directly into the large room where they were. Katie went
first, Donald hanging back behind. "I think I'll not go in," he was
shamefacedly saying, and halting on the step, when above all the
wheel-whirring and yarn-singing came a glad cry,--

"Why, there's Katie--Katie McCloud! and Donald Mackintosh! For pity's
sake!" (the Prince Edward Islander's strongest ejaculation.) "Come in!
come in!" And in a second more a vision, it seemed to the dazed
Donald,--but it was not a vision at all, only a buxom young girl in a
blue homespun gown,--had seized him with one hand and Katie with the
other, and drawn them both into the room, into the general whir and
_melee_ of wheels, merry faces, and still merrier voices.

It was Elspie, Katie's youngest sister,--Katie's special charge and care
when she was a baby, and now her special pet. The greatest desire of
Katie's heart was to have Elspie with her in Charlottetown, but the
father and mother would not consent.

Donald stood like a man in a dream. He did not know it; but from the
moment his eyes first fell on Elspie's face they had followed it as iron
follows the magnet. Were there ever such sweet gray eyes in the world?
and such a pink and white skin? and hair yellow as gold? And what, oh,
what did she wear tucked in at the belt of her white apron but a sprig
of heather! Pink heather,--true, genuine, actual pink heather, such as
Donald had not seen for many a year. No wonder the eyes of the captain
of the "Heather Bell" followed that spray of pink heather wherever it
went flitting about from place to place, never long in one,--for it was
now time for dinner, and Donald and the old people were soon seated at a
small table by themselves, not to embarrass the young girls, and Elspie
and Katie together served the dinner; and though Elspie never once came
to the small table, yet did Donald see every motion she made