“Now, Katie, why will ye be ever asking such questions as you know it wounds me to answer? I have told you he is home safe. He has brought such a store of fish, that, busy as the curers have been on board, there is as much left for the lassies and me to do to-morrow as we can finish before the twenty-four hours are gone. And that reminds me of the nets: Angus must have those he ordered within three days, he bids me tell you; but let us look about for some one to help you, instead of your toiling with your fingers, and harassing your spirits through the night.” “We must toil while the season lasts,” replied Katie; “and as for the wear of spirits,” she continued smiling, “that is all fancy, and must be got over. I have nothing now to tremble for—no need to listen and look out, and I must learn not to heed the storm further than to be thankful that my bairns have about them all that makes a storm harmless. If this was a time of hardship, Ella, like some that have been known here, how I might have envied some who were kept watching, not by cold or hunger, but only by having more employment than they could finish in the day!” “It is a rich season, indeed,” said Ella. “The shoals are such as Angus never saw before, for the multitude and the quality of the fish; and what is more, the crops are coming up kindly, and farmer Duff says that he reckons on the best harvest he has had since he took the farm.” “Thank God!” exclaimed Katie. “This plenty may prevent the price from rising, and nothing else could. It almost frightens me sometimes when I see the numbers that are growing up, to think how we are to get oat and barley meal for them all.” “If you had been here all the sixteen years since I first came to this bay,” said Ella, “you would wonder at the change, and be thankful to see how improvements have risen as wants increased. Now trim your lamp, and go on with your business; it will be some time yet before my husband and Kenneth have finished with the boat and come for me.—Surely you make your meshes more than an inch wide;—no, the exact measure.—Well, that is one of the improvements I speak of.” “It was folly, indeed,” replied Katie, “to use such nets as I used to make—nets that caught the fry and let the full grown go free. That was the quickest way to make every season worse than the last. Then there are the boats, so much safer from having pumps, so much more favourable to the fish from being cleaner, and so much better built, that our fishers need not lose their time in short trips, but can push out into the deep seas, and stay many days together. All these things help to make fishing profitable.” “Besides,” said Ella, “they help farming, which is of as much importance to us as the fishing. Corn from abroad is so dear, that we should be little better off than before, if farmer Duff did not grow more than Murdoch once did.”