* * * * * Nora Shelley went away with the Camerons , and Dalveigh was deserted . Winter came down on Racicot Harbour , and the colony of fisher folk at its head gave themselves over to the idleness of the season -- a time for lounging and gossipping and long hours of lazy contentment smoking in the neighbours ' chimney corners , when tales were told of the sea and the fishing . The Harbour laid itself out to be sociable in winter . There was no time for that in summer . People had to work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four then . In the winter there was spare time to laugh and quarrel , woo and wed and -- were a man so minded -- dream , as did Rob Fletcher in his loneliness . In a Racicot winter much was made of small things . The arrival of Nora Shelley 's weekly letter to her father and mother was an event in the village . The post-mistress in the Cove store spread the news that it had come , and that night the Shelley kitchen would be crowded . Isobel Shelley , Nora 's younger sister , read the letter aloud by virtue of having gone to school long enough to be able to pronounce the words and tell where the places named were situated . The Camerons had spent the autumn in New York and had then gone south for the winter . Nora wrote freely of her new life . In the beginning she admitted great homesickness , but after the first few letters she made no further mention of that . She wrote little of herself , but she described fully the places she had visited , the people she had met , the wonderful things she had seen . She sent affectionate messages to all her old friends and asked after all her old interests . But the letters came to be more and more like those of a stranger and one apart from the Racicot life , and the father and mother felt it . `` She 's changing , '' muttered old Nathan . `` It had to be so -- it 's well for her that it is so -- but it hurts . She ai n't ours any more . We 've lost the girl , wife , lost her forever . ''
Rob XXXXX always came and listened to the letters in silence while the others buzzed and commented .
Camerons Dalveigh Fletcher Harbour Nora Racicot first hours night smoking