I had come from Ontario , the first of September , to visit Uncle Kenneth Morrison 's family . I had been looking forward to the trip for several years . My cousin Kate and I had always corresponded since they had `` gone west '' ten years before ; and Kate , who revelled in the western life , had sung the praises of her adopted land rapturously and constantly . It was quite a joke on her that , when I did finally come to visit her , I should have struck the wettest autumn ever recorded in the history of the west . A wet September in Saskatchewan is no joke , however . The country was almost `` flooded out . '' The trails soon became nearly impassable . All our plans for drives and picnics and inter-neighbour visiting -- at that time a neighbour meant a man who lived at least six miles away -- had to be given up . Yet I was not lonesome , and I enjoyed my visit in spite of everything . Kate was a host in herself . She was twenty-eight years old -- eight years my senior -- but the difference in our ages had never been any barrier to our friendship . She was a jolly , companionable , philosophical soul , with a jest for every situation , and a merry solution for every perplexity . The only fault I had to find with her was her tendency to make parodies . Kate 's parodies were perfectly awful and always got on my nerves . She was dreadfully ashamed of the way the Saskatchewan weather was behaving after all her boasting . She was thin at the best of times , but now she grew positively scraggy with the worry of it . I am afraid I took an unholy delight in teasing her , and abused the western weather even more than was necessary . Jim Nash -- the lank youth who was hired to look after the place during Uncle Kenneth 's absence on a prolonged threshing expedition -- had brought some mail . Kate 's share was a letter , postmarked Bothwell , a rising little town about one hundred and twenty miles from Arrow Creek . Kate had several friends there , and one of our plans had been to visit Bothwell and spend a week with them .
We had meant to drive , of course , since there was no other way XXXXX getting there , and equally of course the plan had been abandoned because of the wet weather .
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