"I don't think Sir George would have the men working that way to-day if it were not necessary," said Helen, seriously; but she remembered a note in her diary, written in the days of their long march.
"It's necessary, sure enough, or they wouldn't have a shingle laid before the flood comes. But the funny part of it is that the boys should put on their best lick to-day. I reckon that speech of the Colonel's did the bizness. If I'd been one of them, I'd ha' done my best, too."
For some time Latimer stood beside the little stove without further comment, and Helen resumed her writing.
"Say, Mrs. Manning!" he exclaimed at last. "Do you think the Colonel has any idee how the war's going? In a week or two the snow 'll be all gone, an' the ice broke up, an' to me it 'pears like he must be 'specting the Yankee ships up to the bay here, or he wouldn't be buildin' a fort."
"You should ask the Colonel," replied Helen, diplomatically. "I can't tell you, perhaps he can. But about our buildings, the sooner they go up the better. This terrible winter seems to have lasted a year at least."
"Golly, no. It has just been the ordinaire. Still, I'll be glad to have it open up an' get my boat out agin. Do you know it's jess bootiful out yon' on the water when the spring comes. The hull east side of the bay is chuck full o' islands, and they're as purty as a pictur. There are thousands of 'em, little bits of fellows and great big ones, scattered up and down like lambs on a pasture field or hickory nuts in the woods. An' then they're all covered wi' bushes and trees like. What I've seen of 'em allus looked like the place my old mother told of, where the fairies lived, and, by jove, nobody but fairies could live there, anyway, for they're nothin' but solid rock, the hull kit of 'em."
"Now you're talking sense for the fust time," said Mrs. Latimer, from the other side of the cribbed little room. "It's one o' the most dangerous lakes you could find anywheres. Nawthing but rocks, rocks, rocks, an' many a boat goes to smash on 'em every year, an' no tellin' how many lives are lost, for they never come back to tell the story."
"I didn't say they warn't dangerous," returned Latimer, sagely holding his head to one side. "I jess said they was bootiful, and so they is. It ain't every one can tell a purty thing when they see it; and more than that," he added sententiously, "the bay is prolific."
"Of what?" his wife asked in supreme contempt.
"Why," he replied in disgust, "of fishes."