"Oh, but you must not stop at that point," said Käthchen. "There are a whole heap of things to be done before you have finally established your earthly paradise. You must banish all sickness and illness—but especially rheumatism. You must abolish old age. You must control the climate to suit the crops. Perhaps you could magnetise the herring-shoals, and bring them round this way, and ward off storms at the same time?" "Käthchen," said Mary abruptly, "why does he keep harking back on Manitoba? Don’t you think there is a curious tenacity about his mind?—he does not change plans or opinions quickly. And I know he was resolved on that emigration scheme. Why does he still talk about Manitoba? If he really has abandoned that project, why does he still keep thinking about Portage, and La Prairie, and Brandon? Of course, I admit that a hundred and sixty acres for two pounds is very tempting; and forty bushels of wheat to the acre sounds well; and I have no doubt the emigrants have better clothes, and better food, and better cottages, and that they don’t run such risks from floods and rain. But still—still there’s something about one’s own country——" "You need not be afraid, Mamie," said Kate Glendinning again. Mary went to the window, and remained there for a minute or two, looking absently across the wide plain of the sea. "After all," she said, "it is a very pleasant and comfortable thing to have a neighbour. Heimra is a good way off; but all the same, if you knew there was no one living on the island, Lochgarra would be a very different place, wouldn’t it, Käthchen? And Manitoba! Why, I have seen it stated that there is a most serious scarcity of water in a great many of the districts; and that often they have summer frosts that do incalculable mischief to the grain. So you see it isn’t a certainty!" "No, it is not," said Käthchen; "but I will tell you what is, Mamie. It is a certainty, an absolute certainty, that Donald Ross of Heimra will not go to Manitoba, or to any other corner of Canada, so long as Mary Stanley is living in Lochgarra." "Käthchen," rejoined Mary, a little proudly, "you will go on talking like that until you believe what you say."