veil, for the peat on Lulu Island had been smoldering for days and
its pungent odors and blue-grey haze made a dream-world of sea and
shore and sky.

I hurried up-shore, hailing her in the Chinook, and as she caught my
voice she lifted her paddle directly above her head in the Indian
signal of greeting.

As she beached, I greeted her with extended eager hands to assist
her ashore, for the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit
she paddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.

"No," she said, as I begged her to come ashore. "I will wait--me.
I just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she soon come--now."
But she left her "working" attitude and curled like a school-girl in
the bow of the canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she
had flung across the gunwales.

"I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for
three moons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries,"
I remarked.

"No," she said. "I stay home this year." Then, leaning towards me
with grave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice, she added,
"I have a grandchild, born first week July, so--I stay."

So this explained her absence. I, of course, offered
congratulations and enquired all about the great event, for this
was her first grandchild, and the little person was of importance.