“I think I’ll sleep on the boat where Grampa Thor is.”

“No! No, you can’t do that, Miss Storm.” There was genuine alarm in his voice. “Czar would have me—–” His tone changed to a wheedling jocularity. “You’re better off here, Miss Storm, that’s a fact. Anyway, Thor’s busy loading up, he can’t be bothered with anybody on board now. They’re due out Tuesday morning. You’re staying here.”

“I am not. I’m going out on the tender with them.”

“That’s too rough for a young lady like you.”

She was rather surprised to hear herself saying, “I like it rough.”

He wagged his head in an unconvincing imitation of admiration. He laughed mirthlessly. “Well, say! Chip off the old block! Now, if there’s anything you want, why, the place is yours, you as good as own the place, along with Czar and the rest. How’s that!”

“I don’t want to own the place.” Then, ashamed of her own rudeness, “I mean, it’s nice of you to be so hospitable. I’d love to see everything.”

“That’s fine,” Bor Maunch agreed. “I’d take you around myself, only I’m busy with a lot of paper work has to go in the mail boat to Suewok. I’ll get one the boys—–”

“Could I try working in the cannery? Just anything, I mean, for a little while? Packing or something, just to try it.”

Horrified, he backed away from her. “Get a finger cut off or something! Czar’d kill me!”

“Czar Czar Czar! I’m here with my Grandfather Thor Storm, he knows more about canneries and fishing and Alaska than anybody in the world! He’s the most wonderful man in Alaska!”

“Well, sure. Sure.” Placatingly. “He sure does, he sure is. I’ll have one the boys show you around—–” He had vanished.

When, that evening, she reported this to Thor, having made her way down to the tender being provisioned at the dock, he heard her out, after which he said, mildly, “Yes, Bor Maunch told me, and everybody on the boat here told me, and the cannery workers told me, and the waitresses, and Mrs. Gulick the matron. This is like a village, Christine, only it’s more remote than a village, so any news is news, and news travels fast on an empty road. I brought you here to see, not to talk. You can do your talking later, perhaps five years from now.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Pretend you’re a seed. Just absorb. Blooming comes later.”

She was guided through the desperately concentrated labor of the cannery by a blindingly handsome and suave young man named Juan Pico. He was employed, not in the actual canning area, but as cook’s helper; slim, elegant, incredible. Chris first saw him after breakfast on her first day at the cannery. In a corner of the vast bright dining hall he was bent over some work spread on a bared table. He was sewing. Then Chris realized that the long leisurely gesture of the man’s arm was that of embroidering. Juan Pico was engaged in the seemingly endless task of creating a gros point carpet. An imposing section of it was completed. Chris saw that its pattern was not the conventional roses and wreaths. Violets strewed the fabric, and pale pink and delicate lemon-yellow small blossoms unfamiliar to her, intertwined with trailing green vines and moss like the earth pattern of a fragrant fresh woodland in the spring.