Noon
She was usually free to go out-of-doors in the afternoons , because the boys only worked until noon , and then again in the evening , when it was night school , and Katherine did her best with such of the fisher folk as preferred learning to loafing and gambling in Oily Dave 's saloon . Even Miles seemed stupid this morning , for he was usually such a good worker ; while Phil was quite hopeless . Both boys were bitten with the snow mania , and longing to be out-of-doors , in all the exhilarating brilliancy of sunshine , frost , and snow . Noon came at last , books were packed away ; the boys rushed off like mad things , while Katherine went more soberly across the store and entered the living-room , which was sitting-room and kitchen combined . An older girl was there , looking too young to be called a woman , but who nevertheless was a widow , and the mother of the twin girls who were rolling on the floor and playing with a big , shaggy wolfhound . She was Nellie , Mrs. Burton , whose husband had been drowned while sealing when the twins were twelve months old . Mrs. Burton had come home to live then , and keep house for her father , so that Katherine might go to Montreal to finish her education .