invitations to spinning-bees at the different farm-houses. Each girl
carries her spinning-wheel on her shoulder. By eight o'clock in the
morning all are gathered and at work: some of them have walked ten miles
or more, and barefoot too, their shoes slung over the shoulder with the
wheel. Once arrived, they waste no time. The rolls of wool are piled
high in the corners of the rooms, and it is the ambition of each one to
spin all she can before dark. At ten o'clock cakes and lemonade are
served; at twelve, the dinner,--thick soup, roast meat, vegetables,
coffee and tea, and a pudding. All are seated at a long table, and the
hostesses serve; at six o'clock comes supper, and then the day's work is
done; after that a little chat or a ramble over the farm, and at eight
o'clock all are off for home. No young men, no games, no dances; yet the
girls look forward to the bees as their greatest spring pleasures, and
no one grudges the time or the strength they take.

It was, indeed, a big bee that Elspie McCloud was having this June
morning. Twenty young girls, all in long white aprons, were spinning
away as if on a wager when Donald and Katie appeared at the door. The
door opened directly into the large room where they were. Katie went
first, Donald hanging back behind. "I think I'll not go in," he was
shamefacedly saying, and halting on the step, when above all the
wheel-whirring and yarn-singing came a glad cry,--

"Why, there's Katie--Katie McCloud! and Donald Mackintosh! For pity's
sake!" (the Prince Edward Islander's strongest ejaculation.) "Come in!
come in!" And in a second more a vision, it seemed to the dazed
Donald,--but it was not a vision at all, only a buxom young girl in a
blue homespun gown,--had seized him with one hand and Katie with the
other, and drawn them both into the room, into the general whir and
_mêlée_ of wheels, merry faces, and still merrier voices.