"And Mary!" exclaimed Katherine, who suddenly went rosy red, for in the last boat of all was an elderly man, with a kind face and a clerical air, whom she instantly recognized as the bishop from the description Jervis had given her of him.
"Katherine, Katherine, how bonny you look!" cried Mary, and then the boats came nearer together, and greetings became general.
Katherine was introduced to the bishop, who bowed and smiled in a kindly fashion, although introductions at fifteen or twenty yards apart are rather awkward affairs. Then Mary insisted on being transferred to Katherine's boat, and as unceremoniously ordered Phil to occupy the place she was leaving.
"Oh, my dear, I am glad to be back again!" she cried, as she settled herself on the seat from which she had just turned Phil.
"We are very glad to see you back," Katherine answered soberly. The sight of the bishop had set her pulses fluttering wildly, and she was hardly mistress of herself again, as yet.
"The journey has been delightful," Mary rattled on, understanding the cause of Katherine's fluctuating colour, and anxious to give her time to recover from her confusion. "We are such a large party, too, that it has been like a perpetual picnic, with only two drawbacks which really mattered."
"What were they?" asked Katherine, supposing the drawbacks to be some item of portage discomfort, or rainstorms which came at the wrong time.
"The first was a horrid little man, a Mr. Clay, who has come all the way from England to see Mr. Ferrars, and begged to be allowed to attach himself to our party. A perfect little kill-joy he is, so prim, so proper and precise, that one is tempted to believe he must have been born a grown-up, and so has had no childhood at all."
"Where is he now? I did not notice that there was another stranger beside the bishop," said Katherine, turning her head to look at the other boats, which were leading.
"We left him behind at the fish sheds with Mr. Ferrars," said Mary. "He has his own boat and his own men. He turns his aristocratic little nose up at everything Canadian, and loudly pities anyone who is fated to live two or three hundred miles from a railway depot. But he apparently has the most utter admiration for Mr. Ferrars, and the fright he was in the day we found the bones was, I am quite sure, entirely due to a fear he had lest it was Mr. Ferrars who had come to grief."