Something in her blood helped her, but more, it was her aunt's touch upon her life.

For every week a letter came from the country manse, bringing with it some of the sweet simplicity of the country and something like a breath of heaven.
She was nearing her fifteenth birthday, and though almost every letter brought an invitation to visit the manse in the backwoods, it was only when the girl's pale cheek and languid air awakened her father's anxiety that she was allowed to accept the invitation to spend some weeks in the country.
* * * * * When Ranald and Hughie drove up to the manse on Saturday evening in the jumper the whole household rushed forth to see them.

They were worth seeing.

Burned black with the sun and the March winds, they would have easily passed for young Indians.

Hughie's clothes were a melancholy and fluttering ruin; and while Ranald's stout homespun smock and trousers had successfully defied the bush, his dark face and unkempt hair, his rough dress and heavy shanty boots, made him appear, to Maimie's eyes, an uncouth, if not pitiable, object.
"Oh, mother!" cried Hughie, throwing himself upon her, "I'm home again, and we've had a splendid time, and we made heaps of sugar, and I've brought you a whole lot." He drew out of his pockets three or four cakes of maple sugar.