“It isn’t a quarrel; it’s a row,” said Jack.
“A distinction not without a difference,” laughed Rose. “Oh, here is everybody.” And with jest and laughter they climbed the steps cut in the cliff, and gaily entered the cabin which was to be their home for some weeks.
There was a large, low-raftered room, covered with birch-bark of many tints. On each side were two chambers, for the elders. The boys, to their joy, were to sleep in tents on the bluff, near to where the tents of the guides were pitched, a little away from the cabin, and back of a roaring camp-fire. Behind the house a smaller cabin sufficed for a kitchen, and in the log-house, where also a fire blazed in ruddy welcome, not ungrateful after the coolness of the river, the supper-table was already set. As Rose got up from table, after the meal, she missed her mother, and, taking a shawl, went out onto the porch which surrounded the house on all sides.
For a moment, she saw only the upward flare of the northern lights, and then, presently, Mrs. Lyndsay, standing silent on the bluff, with a hand on Ned’s shoulder, looking across the river. Rose quietly laid the shawl over her mother’s shoulders, and caught her hand. Mrs. Lyndsay said, “Thank you, dear Rose, but I want to be alone a little. I shall come in very soon.” They went without a word, meeting their father just within the door. “Mother sent us in,” said Rose.
“I understand,” and he also turned back. “It is Harry! It is about Harry.”
“Yes, it is Harry,” repeated Rose; for the year before Mrs. Lyndsay had left a little weakly fellow, her youngest, in the rude burial-ground of the small Methodist church, some miles away, up the stream. She had been alone with Mr. Lyndsay and the child, and it had been her first summer on the river. When, the next spring, she had proposed to take thither the whole family, her husband had gladly consented.
CHAPTER II
Mrs. Lyndsay—comely, rosy, in the vigor of young middle-life—was the first to welcome the sun, as it came over the hills beyond the river. In the camps was stir of breakfast, and silent, inverted cones of smoke from the fires. Soon Rose, on the edge of the cliff, cried “Good morning!” and the mother saw the strong, well-built girl come toward her, and had pride in her vigor and sweetness. They kissed, and the mother went in, and Rose back to her maiden meditations.
She sat down on a camp-stool, and felt that for the first time she had leisure to think. She and her aunt had been met by her father when their steamer came, and amidst incessant questions they had been hurried off into the wilds of New Brunswick. A year away had made for her new possibilities of observation, and now, with surprised interest, she found herself in the center of a household which, assuredly, even to the more experienced, would have seemed peculiar. It was, in fact, more peculiar than odd. There was no eccentricity, but much positive character. This Rose Lyndsay saw as she had never seen it before. The growth of definitely marked natures in the boys struck her, the fresh air of a kind of family freedom rare elsewhere; the audacity of the lads’ comments, and their easy relations with the father, were things which now she saw anew with more thoughtfully observant eyes.