Mary "Are you ready, Mary ?" "In one minute, Father.

Let me see: three bags, a valise, a hold-all, a portmanteau, two hatboxes, a camping sack, a case of books, and a handbag.

Oh dear, what a collection of things to look after! How I wish we were like the dogs, dear creatures, which grow their own clothes and have only their tails to hold up, or to wag in sign of amity!" The speaker was a girl of perhaps twenty, although she had one of those quiet reserved faces which render difficult a correct guessing of the age.

She was standing in the porch of the Bellevue Hotel, Temiskaming, and was garbed as if for rough travel, in coat and skirt of heather-brown cloth, faced with brown leather, with a brown hat on her head, and brown boots on her feet which reached well above the ankle.

Indeed her attire was so trim, and so exceedingly suitable for rough work, that everyone at the first glance decided she must be English.
"I fancy you would not care to wear the same coat always, nor yet to wag the same tail," laughed her father, a genial-looking man of fifty, who was dressed with equal fitness for rough travel, and was just now intent on hurrying his daughter to the lake boat, which was getting up steam at a little distance.
"Like it or not, I expect it is what I shall be reduced to by the end of the summer," laughed Mary Selincourt, as she watched the various bags and bundles being piled on to a barrow by the hotel porter.
"Well, look your last on civilization and come along, for that boat won't wait much longer," said Mr.Selincourt, adding with a laugh: "unless indeed you are beginning to repent, in which case it is not too late to change your mind and go back to Miss Griffith." "Thank you! I never change my mind unless it is about the weather, and I wouldn't turn back on this journey on any account whatever." "Not if I turned back myself ?" he enquired, as they went on board the boat.
"No; unless, of course, you were ill, in which case, I suppose, my sense of duty would oblige me to stop, even while my inclination was dragging me, with both hands, as near to the North Pole as a woman may hope to get," she said, with a nervous catching of her breath which showed some agitation behind.
"But James Bay isn't the North Pole," objected Mr.Selincourt.
"It is nearer though than this, I suppose.