“I’ll go to the Orwell Head picnic to-morrow,” she said to herself.  “It’s so near the old place perhaps Donald’ll walk over home with me.  It’s long since he’s seen the farm, I’ll be bound.”

Now, Katie did not say to herself in so many words, “It will be like old times when we were young, and it may be something will stir in Donald’s heart for me at the sight of the fields.”  Not only did she not say this; she did not know that she thought it; but it was there, all the same, a lurking, newly revived, vague, despairing sort of hope.  And because it was there she spent half the day retrimming a bonnet and washing and ironing a gown to wear to the picnic; and after long and anxious pondering of the matter, she deliberately took out of her best box of artificial flowers a bunch of white heather, and added it to the bonnet trimming.  It did not look overmuch like heather, and it did not suit the bonnet, of which Katie was dimly aware; but she wanted to say to Donald, “See, I put a sprig of heather in my bonnet in honor of your boat to-day.”  Simple little Katie!

It was a large and noisy picnic, of the very sort Donald most disliked, and he kept himself out of sight until the last moment, just before they swung round at Spruce Wharf.  Then, as he stood on the upper deck giving orders about the flinging out of the ropes, Katie looked up at him from below, and called, in a half-whisper:  “Oh, Donald, I was thinking I’d walk over home instead of staying here to the dance.  Wouldn’t ye be goin’ with me, Donald?  They’d be glad to see ye.”

“Ay, Katie,” answered Donald; “that will I, and be glad to be out of this.”  And as soon as the boat was safely moored, he gave his orders to his mate for the day, and leaping down joined the glad Katie; and before the picnickers had even missed them they were well out of sight, walking away briskly over the brown fields.

Katie was full of happiness.  As she glanced up into Donald’s face she found it handsomer and kinder than she had seen it, she thought, for many years.

“It was for this I came, Donald,” she said merrily.  “When I heard the dance was to be in the Spruce Grove I made up my mind to come and surprise the folks.  It’s nigh six months since I’ve been home.”

“Pity ye ever left it, my girl,” said Donald, gravely.  “The home’s the place for women.”  But he said it in a pleasant tone, and his eyes rested affectionately on Katie’s face.

“Eh, but ye’re bonny to-day, Katie; do ye know it?” he continued, his glance lingering on her fresh color and her smiling face.  In his heart he was saying:  “An’ what is it makes her so young-looking to-day?  It was an old face she had on the last time I saw her.”

Happiness, Donald, happiness!  Even those few minutes of it had worked the change.

Encouraged by this praise, Katie said, pointing to the flowers in her bonnet, “It’s the heather ye’re meanin’, maybe, Donald, an’ not me?”