Valancy toiled¹ not, neither did she spin. There was really very little work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites² carefully and exultingly³, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table.

 

“What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack⁴!” Barney would say exultantly⁵.

 

Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds were something that cannot be expressed in mere⁶ words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight⁷ wove them all into one great web of dusk.

 

The cats, with their wise, innocent little faces, would sit on the verandah railing and eat the tidbits Barney flung them. And how good everything tasted! Valancy, amid all the romance of Mistawis, never forgot that men had stomachs. Barney paid her no end of compliments on her cooking.

 

“After all,” he admitted, “there’s something to be said for square meals. I’ve mostly got along by boiling two or three dozen eggs hard at once and eating a few when I got hungry, with a slice of bacon once in a while and a jorum of tea.”

 

Valancy poured tea out of Barney’s little battered⁸ old pewter teapot of incredible age. She had not even a set of dishes—only Barney’s mismatched chipped bits—and a dear, big, pobby old

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