Then Jervis left, her father went with slow, faltering steps to his bed, and Nellie came in, but, thinking her sister asleep, moved softly and did not speak, for which Katherine was mutely grateful.
It was very early on the following morning when she saw the boat with Mr.Selincourt and Mary slipping down the river, rowed by some of the men who had brought them up from the lakes.

So it would be a day of respite, for the Selincourts would not be back until evening, too late to go visiting among their neighbours, and Katherine's spirits rose immediately, because there was one more day to be happy in.
She had to go to Fort Garry that day, and started an hour before noon, taking Phil with her as usual, and having her boat piled high with skins taken in barter, bags of feathers, and other marketable products.

There was a short outlet to the bay from the river, a weedy channel leading through flat meadows of vivid green; only, to use an Irishism, they were not meadows at all, but stretches of swamp, in Canadian parlance a muskeg: and the unwary creature, human or animal, that set foot thereon was speedily engulfed.

Very beautiful these stretches of rich green looked on a bright summer's day, and Katherine exclaimed in delight as she forced the boat through the weedy channel, which became every week more difficult to pass.
"Oh, Phil, isn't it lovely!" she cried.
"Can't say I admire it," the boy answered grumpily.

"The air down here always seems to choke me, and it is twice as much trouble to drive the boat through this narrow, weedy channel as it is to go the longer way round." "I know we shall have to cease coming this way soon, but it is pretty, and I like it," Katherine answered, and would not admit even to herself that her chief reason in choosing those weedy byways, was the desire to avoid all danger of an encounter with the Selincourts.
The voyage to Fort Garry was without incident, and the interview with the M'Crawneys was of the usual type.