new friendliness. He came often to see her, and told
her with the greatest frankness of his visits at the farm. He would take
her some day, he said; the trouble was, he could never be sure
beforehand when it would answer for him to stop there. Katie sunned
herself in this new familiar intercourse, and the thought of Donald
running up to the old farm of a Sunday as if he were one of the brothers
going home. In the contentment of these thoughts she grew younger and
prettier,--began to look as she did at twenty. And Donald, gazing
scrutinizingly in her face one day, seeking, as he was always doing, for
stray glimpses of resemblance to Elspie, saw this change, and
impulsively told her of it.

"But ye're growin' young, Katie--d'ye know it?--young and bonny, my
girl."

And Katie listened to the words with such sweet joy she feared her face
would tell too much, and put up her hands to hide it, crying: "Ah, ye're
tryin' to make me silly, you Donald, with such flatterin'. We're gettin'
old, Donald, you an' me," she added, with a guilty little undercurrent
of thought in her mind. "D'ye mind that I was thirty last month?"

"Ay," replied Donald, gloomily, his face darkening,--"ay; I mind, by the
same token, I'm forty. It's no need ye have to be callin' yersel' old.
But I'm old, an' no mistake." The thought, as Katie had put it, had been
gall and wormwood to him. If Katie thought him old, what must he seem to
Elspie!

It was early in June that Elspie had had the spinning-bee to which Katie
had brought the unwelcome Donald. The summer sped past, but a faster
summer than any reckoned on the calendar of months and days was speeding
in Elspie's heart. Such great love as Donald's reaches and warms its
object as inevitably as the heat of a fire warms those near it. Early in
June the spinning-bee, and before the last flax was pulled, early in
September, Elspie knew that she was restless till Donald came, glad when
he was by her side, and strangely sorry when he went away. Still, she
was not ready to admit to herself that it was anything more than her
natural liking for any pleasant friend who broke in on the lonely
monotony of the farm life.

The final drying of the flax, which is an important crop on most of the
Prince Edward Island farms, is put off until autumn. After its first
drying in the fields where it grew, it is stored in bundles under cover
till all the other summer work is done, and autumn brings leisure. Then
the flax ca