“She lives near Ellen an’ all,” Dolly went on, setting her sturdy little shoulder to the cupboard. “She’s moved there just lately. She doesn’t see much of her, she says, as they’re both so throng, but she sends me news of her every now and then.” Mattie said, “Oh, ay?” again, as some answer seemed to be needed, but every letter of the little phrase bristled defensively. She had the same impression of interference as at the sight of Ellen’s packet, the same sensitive fear of being twisted from her path.... “Lend me a hand with this table now,” she continued quickly, hoping that Dolly’s cousin Jessie might drop out of the conversation. But Dolly had no intention of parting with such an asset until she had added her utmost to the interest of the occasion. She was too much absorbed by her own prospects to be greatly aware of another person’s reactions, as well as too highly excited to refrain from talking. Moreover, she thought in all innocence that Mrs. Kirkby would be only too glad to listen to anything that she could tell her about Canada. Her cousin Jessie, therefore, was so much present with them during the afternoon, that it seemed to Mattie sometimes she had only to turn herself about in order to see her. “Jessie isn’t best suited with Canada,” Dolly said, when the table had been restored to its place, and the articles which usually reposed upon it had returned to grace it. “She says it’s so different.” “Different to what?” Mattie enquired, affecting obtuseness from a growing sense of annoyance. “I don’t rightly follow.” “Different to England, she means, and the things she’s been used to, over here. She says there’s times she feels she might as well be in the moon, it’s all so strange.” “Well, and why shouldn’t it be?” Mattie returned, slapping down a book with unnecessary vehemence, and then discovering it to be Kirkby’s mother’s Bible. “It’s like to be different, isn’t it, seeing it started a deal later?” “Ay, I told her that when she was complaining about folks being scattered about like except when you got to the big cities. But Jessie was always the sort that liked a crowd, even if it meant sitting on other folks’ knees or sleeping three in a bed.... But it isn’t only that,” she continued, when she and Mattie between them had removed the packing-case from the larder. “There’s the climate as well. She says it’s that cold in the winter you could get yourself frozen stiff before you’d know anything about it.” “I reckon _I’d_ know all right, anyhow,” Mattie retorted grimly, although not without an inward qualm. Her particular brand of rheumatism, acquired by a lifetime spent in damp gardens, was peculiarly if incongruously susceptible to frost. “Ay, and if I was getting melted, either, come to that!”