This, then, was the true inwardness of it all; the thing that dignified and ennobled this life of toil and hardship, deprived of almost all the things which she had always regarded as necessary, that the welfare, prosperity and happiness of generations yet to come might be reared on this foundation laid by self-denial and deprivation.

She felt almost humbled in the presence of this simple, unpretentious, kindly woman who had borne so much without complaint that her children might have wider opportunities for usefulness and happiness than she had ever known.

Not that Mrs. Sharp, herself, seemed to think that she was doing anything remarkable. She took it all as a matter of course. It was only when something brought up the subject of the difficulties of learning to do without this or that, that she alluded to the days when she also was inexperienced and had had to learn for herself without anyone to advise or help her.

Miles away from any help other than her husband could give her, she had borne six children and buried one. And although the days of their worst poverty seemed safely behind them, they had been able to save but little, so that they still felt themselves at the mercies of the changing seasons. Given one or two good years to harvest their crops, they might indeed consider themselves almost beyond the danger point. But with seven mouths to feed, one could not afford to lose a single crop.

With her head teeming with all the new ideas that Mrs. Sharp's experiences furnished, Nora felt that the time was by no means as wasted as she had once thought it would be. There was no reason, after all, that she should sink to the level of a mere domestic drudge. And if this part of her life was not to endure forever, it would not have been entirely barren, since it furnished her with much new material to ponder over. After all, was it really more narrow than her life at Tunbridge Wells? In her heart, she acknowledged that it was not.

To Frank, also, the winter brought a broader outlook. He had looked upon Nora's little refinements of speech and delicate point of view, when he had first known her at her brother's, as finicky, to say the least. All women had fool notions about most things; this one seemed to have more than the average share, that was all. He secretly shared Gertie's opinion that women the world over were all alike in the essentials. He had always been of the opinion that Nora had good stuff in her which would come out once she had been licked into shape. Yet he found himself not only learning to admire her for those same niceties but found himself unconsciously imitating her mannerisms of speech.

Then, too, after they began the habit of reading in the evenings, he found that she had no intention of ridiculing his ignorance and lack of knowledge in matters on which she seemed to him to be wonderfully informed. That they did not by any means always agree in the conclusions they arrived at, in place of irritating him, as he would have thought, he found only stimulating to his imagination. To attack and try to undermine her position, as long as their arguments were conducted with perfect good nature on either side, as they always were, diverted him greatly. And he was secretly pleased when she defended herself with a skill and address that defeated his purpose.

All the little improvements in the shack were a source of never-ending pride and pleasure to him. Often when at work he found himself proudly comparing his place with its newly added prettiness with the more gaudy ornaments of Mrs. Sharp's or even with Gertie's more pretentious abode. And it was not altogether the pride of ownership that made them suffer in the comparison.

Looking back on the days before Nora's advent seemed like a horrible nightmare from which he was thankful to have awakened. Once in a while he indulged himself in speculating as to how it would feel to go back to the old shiftless, untidy days of his bachelorhood. But he rarely allowed himself to entertain the idea of her leaving, seriously. He was like a child, snuggly tucked in his warm bed who, listening to the howling of the wind outside, pictures himself exposed to its harshness in order to luxuriate the more in its warmth and comfort.

But when, as sometimes happened, he could not close the door of his mind to the thought of how he should ever learn to live without her again, it brought an anguish that was physical as well as mental. Once, looking up from her book, Nora had surprised him sitting with closed eye, his face white and drawn with pain.

Her fright, and above all her pretty solicitude even after he had assuaged her fears by explaining that he occasionally suffered from an old strain which he had sustained a few years before while working in the lumber camps, tried his composure to the utmost.

For days, the memory of the look in her eyes as she bent over him remained in his mind. But he was careful not to betray himself again.

It was to prevent any repetition that he first resorted to working over something while she was reading. While doubly occupied with listening and working with his hands, he found that his mind was less apt to go off on a tangent and indulge in painful and profitless speculations.

For, after all, as she had said, how could he prevent her going if her heart was set on it? That she had given no outward sign of being unhappy or discontented argued nothing. She was far too shrewd to spend her strength in unavailing effort. Pride and ordinary prudence would counsel waiting for a more favorable opportunity than had yet been afforded her. She would not soon forget the lesson of the night he had beaten down her opposition and dragged her pride in the dust.

And would she ever forgive it? That was a question that he asked himself almost daily without finding any answer. There was nothing in her manner to show that she harbored resentment or that she was brooding over plans for escaping from the bondage of her life. But women, in his experience, were deep, even cunning. Once given a strong purpose, women like Nora, pursued it to the end. Women of this type were not easily diverted by side issues as men so often were.

For weeks he lived in daily apprehension of Ed's arrival. There was no one else she could turn to, and evoking his aid did not necessarily argue that she must submit again to Gertie's grudging hospitality. Ed might easily, unknown to his masterful better-half, furnish the funds to return to England. She had not written him that he knew of. As a matter of fact, she had not, but she might have given the letter to Sid Sharp to post on one of his not infrequent trips into Prentice. It would only have been by chance that Sid would speak of so trifling a matter. He was much too proud to question him.

But as time went on and no Ed appeared, he began, if not exactly to hope that, after all she was finding the life not unbearable, at least her leaving was a thing of the more or less remote future. He summoned all his philosophy to his aid. Perhaps by the time she did make up her mind to quit him he would have acquired some little degree of resignation, or at least would not be caught as unprepared as he frankly confessed himself to be at the moment.

The spring, which brought many new occupations, mostly out of doors, had passed, and summer was past its zenith. Frank had worked untiringly from dawn to dark, so wearied that he frequently found it difficult to keep his eyes open until supper was over. But his enthusiasm never flagged. If everything went as well as he hoped, the additional quarter-section was assured. For some reason or other, possibly because he was beginning to feel a reaction after the hard work of the summer, Nora fancied that his spirits were less high than usual. He talked less of the coveted land than was his custom. She, herself, had never, in all her healthy life, felt so glowing with health and strength. She, too, had worked hard, finding almost every day some new task to perform. But aside from the natural fatigue at night, which long hours of dreamless sleep entirely dissipated, she felt all the better for her new experiences. For one thing, her steady improvement in all the arts of the good housewife made her daily routine much easier as well as giving her much secret satisfaction. Never in her life had she looked so well. The summer sun had given her a color which was most becoming.



CHAPTER XVI

One afternoon, shortly after dinner, she had gone out to gather a nosegay of wild flowers to brighten her little living-room. She was busily engaged in arranging them in a pudding bowl, smiling to think that her hand had lost none of the cunning to which Miss Wickham had always paid grudging tribute, even if her improvised vase was of homely ware, when she heard her husband's step at the door. It was so unusual for him to return at this hour that for a moment she was almost startled.

"I didn't know you were about."

"Oh," he said easily, "I ain't got much to do to-day. I've been out with Sid Sharp and a man come over from Prentice."

"From Prentice?"

Having arranged her flowers to her satisfaction, she stepped back to view the effect. At that moment her husband's eye fell on them.

"Say, what you got there?"

"Aren't they pretty? I picked them just now. They're so gay and cheerful."

"Very." But his tone had none of the enthusiasm with which he usually greeted her efforts to beautify the house.

"A few flowers make the shack look more bright and cozy."

He took in the room with a glance that approved of everything.

"You've made it a real home, Nora. Mrs. Sharp never stops talking of how you've done it. She was saying only the other day it was because you was a lady. It does make a difference, I guess, although I didn't use to think so."

Nora gave him a smile full of indulgence.

"I'm glad you haven't found me quite a hopeless failure."

"I guess I've never been so comfortable in all my life. It's what I always said: once English girls do take to the life, they make a better job of it than anybody."

"What's the man come over from Prentice for?" asked Nora. They were approaching a subject she always avoided.

"I guess you ain't been terribly happy here, my girl," he said gravely, unmindful of her question.

"What on earth makes you say that?"

"You've got too good a memory, I guess, and you ain't ever forgiven me for that first night."

It was the first time he had alluded to the subject for months. Would he never understand that she wanted to forget it! He might know that it always irritated her.

"I made up my mind very soon that I must accept the consequences of what I'd done. I've tried to fall in with your ways," she said coldly.

"You was clever enough to see that I meant to be the master in my own house and that I had the strength to make myself so."

How unlike his latter self this boastful speech was. But then he had been utterly unlike himself for several days. What did he mean? She knew him well enough by now to know that he never acted without meaning. But directness was one of his most admirable characteristics. It was unlike him to be devious, as he was being now. But if the winter had taught her anything, it had taught her patience.

"I've cooked for you, mended your clothes, and I've kept the shack clean. I've tried to be obliging and—and obedient." The last word was not yet an easy one to pronounce.

"I guess you hated me, though, sometimes." He gave a little chuckle.

"No one likes being humiliated; and you humiliated me."

"Ed's coming here presently, my girl."

"Ed who?"

"Your brother Ed."

"Eddie! When?"

"Why, right away, I guess. He was in Prentice this morning."

"How do you know?"

"He 'phoned over to Sharp to say he was riding out."

"Oh, how splendid! Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't know about it."

"Is that why you asked me if I was happy? I couldn't make out what was the matter with you."

"Well, I guess I thought if you still wanted to quit, Ed's coming would be kind of useful."

Nora sat down in one of the chairs and gave him a long level look.

"What makes you think that I want to?" she said quietly.

"You ain't been so very talkative these last months, but I guess it wasn't so hard to see sometimes that you'd have given pretty near anything in the world to quit."

"I've no intention of going back to Eddie's farm, if that's what you mean."

To this he made no reply. Still with the same grave air, he went over to the door and started out again, pausing a moment after he had crossed the threshold.

"If Ed comes before I get back, tell him I won't be long. I guess you won't be sorry to do a bit of yarning with him all by yourself."

"You are not going away with the idea that I'm going to say beastly things to him about you, are you?"

"No, I guess not. That ain't your sort. Perhaps we don't know the best of one another yet, but I reckon we know the worst by this time."

"Frank!" she said sharply. "There's something the matter. What is it?"

"Why, no; there's nothing. Why?"

"You've not been yourself the last few days."

"I guess that's only your imagination. Well, I'd better be getting along. Sid and the other fellow'll be waiting for me."

Without another look in her direction, he was gone, closing the door after him.

Nora remained quite still for several minutes, biting her lips and frowning in deep thought. It was all very well to say that there was nothing the matter, but there was. Did he think she could live with him day after day all these months and not notice his change of mood, even if she could not translate it? He had still a great deal to learn about women!

On the way over to the shelf to get her work, she paused a moment beside her flowers to cheer herself once more with their brightness. Sitting down by the table, she began to darn one of her husband's thick woolen socks. An instant later she was startled by a loud knock on the door.

With a little cry of pleasure she flung it open, to find Eddie standing outside. She gave a cry of delight. Somehow, the interval since she had seen him last, significant as it was in bringing to her the greatest change her life had known, seemed for the second longer than all the years she had spent in England without seeing him.

"Eddie! Oh, my dear, I'm so glad to see you!" she cried, flinging her arms around his neck.

"Hulloa there," he said awkwardly.

"But how did you come? I didn't hear any wheels."

"Look." He pointed over to the shed; she looked over his shoulder to see Reggie Hornby grinning at her from the seat of a wagon.

"Why, it's Reggie Hornby. Reggie!" she called.

Reggie took off his broad hat with a flourish.

"Tell him he can put the horse in the lean-to."

"All right. Reg," called Marsh, "give the old lady a feed and put her in the lean-to."

"Right-o!"

"Didn't you meet Frank? He's only just this moment gone out."

"No."

"He'll be back presently. Now, come in. Oh, my dear, it is splendid to see you!"

"You're looking fine, Nora."

"Have you had your dinner?"

"Sure. We got something to eat before we left Prentice."

"Well, you'll have a cup of tea?"

"No, I won't have any, thanks."

"Ah," laughed Nora happily, "you're not a real Canadian yet, if you refuse a cup of tea when it's offered you. But do sit down and make yourself comfortable," she said, fairly pushing him into a chair.

"How are you getting along, Nora?" His manner was still a little constrained. They were both thinking of their last parting. But she, being a woman, could carry it off better.

"Oh, never mind about me," she said gayly. "Tell me all about yourself. How's Gertie? And what has brought you to this part of the world? And what's Reggie Hornby doing here? And is Thingamajig still with you; you know, the hired man?"—The word "other" almost slipped out.—"What was his name, Trotter, wasn't it? Oh, my dear, don't sit there like a stuffed pig, but answer my questions, or I'll shake you."

"My dear child, I can't answer fifteen questions all at once!"

"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad to see you! You are a perfect duck to come and see me."

"Now let me get a word in edgeways."

"I won't utter another syllable. But, for goodness' sake, hurry up. I want to know all sorts of things."

"Well, the most important thing is that I'm expecting to be a happy father in three or four months."

"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad! How happy Gertie must be."

"She doesn't know what to make of it. But I guess she's pleased right enough. She sends you her love and says she hopes you'll follow her example very soon."

"I?" said Nora sharply. "But," she added with a return to her gay tone, "you've not told me what you're doing in this part of the world, anyway."

"Anyway?"

Nora blushed. "I've practically spoken to no one but Frank for months; it's natural that I should fall into his way of speaking."

"Well, when I got Frank's letter about the clearing-machine——"

"Frank has written to you?"

"Why, yes; didn't you know? He said there was a clearing-machine going cheap at Prentice. I've always thought I could make money down our way if I had one. They say you can clear from three to four acres a day with one. Frank thought it was worth my while to come and have a look at it and he said he guessed you'd be glad to see me."

"How funny of him not to say anything to me about it," said Nora, frowning once more.

"I suppose he wanted to surprise you. And now for yourself; how do you like being a married woman?"

"Oh, all right. But you haven't answered half my questions yet. Why has Reggie Hornby come with you?"

"Do you realize I've not seen you since before you were married?"

"That's so; you haven't, have you?"

"I've been a bit anxious about you. That's why, when Frank wrote about the clearing-machine, I didn't stop to think about it, but just came."

"It was awfully nice of you. But why has Reggie Hornby come?"

"Oh, he's going back to England."

"Is he?"

"Yes, he got them to send his passage money at last. His ship doesn't sail till next week, and he said he might just as well stop over here and say good-by to you."

"How has he been getting on?"

"How do you expect? He looks upon work as something that only damned fools do. Where's Frank?"

"Oh, he's out with Sid Sharp. Sid's our neighbor. He has the farm you passed on your way here."

"Getting on all right with him, Nora?"

"Why, of course," said Nora with just a suggestion of irritation in her voice.

"What's that boy doing all this time?" she asked, going over to the window and looking out. "He is slow, isn't he?"

But Marsh was not a man whom it was easy to side-track.

"It's a great change for you, this, after the sort of life you've been used to."

"I was rather hoping you'd have some letters for me," said Nora from the window. "I haven't had a letter for a long time."

As a matter of fact she had no reason to expect any, not having answered Miss Pringle's last and having practically no other correspondent. But the speech was a happy one, in that it created the desired diversion.

"There now!" said her brother with an air of comical consternation. "I've got a head like a sieve. Two came by the last mail. I didn't forward them, because I was coming myself."

"You don't mean to tell me you've forgotten them!"

"No; here they are."

Nora took them with a show of eagerness. "They don't look very exciting," she said, glancing at them. "One's from Agnes Pringle, the lady's companion that I used to know at Tunbridge Wells, you remember. And the other's from Mr. Wynne."

"Who's he?"

"Oh, he was Miss Wickham's solicitor. He wrote to me once before to say he hoped I was getting on all right. I don't think I want to hear from people in England any more," she said in a low voice, more to herself than to him, tossing the letters on the table.

"My dear, why do you say that?"

"It's no good thinking of the past, is it?"

"Aren't you going to read your letters?"

"Not now; I'll read them when I'm alone."

"Don't mind me."

"It's silly of me; but letters from England always make me cry."

"Nora! Then you aren't happy here."

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"Then why haven't you written to me but once since you were married?"

"I hadn't anything to say. And then," carrying the war into the enemy's quarter, "I'd been practically turned out of your house."

"I don't know what to make of you. Frank Taylor's kind to you and all that sort of thing, isn't he?"

"Very. But don't cross-examine me, there's a dear."

"When I asked you to come and make your home with me, I thought it mightn't be long before you married. But I didn't expect you to marry one of the hired men."

"Oh, my dear, please don't worry about me." Nora was about at the end of her endurance.

"It's all very fine to say that; but you've got no one in the world belonging to you except me."

"Don't, I tell you."

"Nora!"

"Now listen. We've never quarreled once since the first day I came here. Now are you satisfied?"

She said it bravely, but it was with a feeling of unspeakable relief that she saw Reggie Hornby at the door.

She certainly had never before been so genuinely glad to see him. As she smilingly held out her hand, her eye took in his changed appearance. Gone were the overalls and the flannel shirt, the heavy boots and broad belt. Before her stood the Reggie of former days in a well-cut suit of blue serge and spotless linen. She was surprised to find herself thinking, after all, men looked better in flannels.

"I was wondering what on earth you were doing with yourself," she said gayly.

"I say," he said, his eye taking in the bright little room, "this is a swell shack you've got."

"I've tried to make it look pretty and homelike."

"Helloa, what's this!" said Marsh, whose eye had fallen for the first time on the bowl of flowers.

"Aren't they pretty? I've only just picked them. They're mustard flowers."

"We call them weeds. Have you much of it?"

"Oh, yes; lots. Why?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Eddie tells me you're going home."

"Yes," said Reggie, seating himself and carefully pulling up his trousers. "I'm fed up for my part with God's own country. Nature never intended me to be an agricultural laborer."

"No? And what are you going to do now?"

"Loaf!" Mr. Hornby's tone expressed profound conviction.

"Won't you get bored?" smiled Nora.

"I'm never bored. It amuses me to watch other people do things. I should hate my fellow-creatures to be idle."

"I should think one could do more with life than lounge around clubs and play cards with people who don't play as well as oneself."

Hornby gave her a quick ironic look. "I quite agree with you," he said with his most serious air. "I've been thinking things over very seriously this winter. I'm going to look out for a middle-aged widow with money who'll adopt me."

"I recall that you have decided views about the White Man's Burden."

"All I want is to get through life comfortably. I don't mean to do a stroke more work than I'm obliged to, and I'm going to have the very best time I can."

"I'm sure you will," said Nora, smiling.

But her smile was a little mechanical. Somehow she could no longer be genuinely amused at such sentiments which, in spite of his airy manner, she knew to be real. And yet, it was not so very long ago that she would have thought them perfectly natural in a man of his position. Somehow, her old standards were not as fixed as she had thought them.

"The moment I get back to London," continued Hornby imperturbably, "I'm going to stand myself a bang-up dinner at the Ritz. Then I shall go and see some musical comedy at the Gaiety, and after that, I'll have a slap-up supper at Romano's. England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!" he finished piously.

"I suppose it's being alone with the prairie all these months," said Nora, more to herself than him; "but things that used to seem clever and funny—well, I see them altogether differently now."

"I'm afraid you don't altogether approve of me," he said, quite unabashed.

"I don't think you have much pluck," said Nora, not unkindly.

"Oh, I don't know about that. I've as much as anyone else, I expect, only I don't make a fuss about it."

"Oh, pluck to stand up and let yourself be shot at."—She flushed slightly at the remembrance of Frank standing in this very room in front of the gun in her hand. Would she ever forget his laugh!—"But pluck to do the same monotonous thing day after day, plain, honest, hard work—you haven't got that sort of pluck. You're a failure and the worst of it is, you're not ashamed of it. It seems to fill you with self-satisfaction. Oh, you're incorrigible," she ended with a laugh.

"I am; let's let it go at that. I suppose there's nothing you want me to take home; I shall be going down to Tunbridge Wells to see mother. Got any messages?"

"I don't know that I have. Eddie has just brought me a couple of letters. I'll have a look at them first."

She went over to the table and picked up Miss Pringle's letter and opened it.

After reading a few lines, she gave a little cry.

"Oh!"

"What's the matter?" asked Marsh.

"What can she mean? Listen! 'I've just heard from Mr. Wynne about your good luck and I'm glad to say I have another piece of good news for you.'"

Dropping the letter, she tore open the other. It contained a check. She gave it a quick glance.

"A check for five hundred pounds! Oh, Eddie, listen." She read from Mr. Wynne's letter: "'Dear Miss Marsh—I have had several interviews with Mr. Wickham in relation to the late Miss Wickham's estate, and I ventured to represent to him that you had been very badly treated. Now that everything is settled, he wishes me to send you the enclosed check as some recognition of your devoted services to his late aunt—five hundred pounds."

"That's a very respectable sum," said Marsh, nodding his head sagely.

"I could do with that myself," remarked Hornby.

"I've never had so much money in all my life!"

"But what's the other piece of good news that Miss Stick-in-the-mud has for you?"

"Oh, I quite forgot. Where is it?" Her brother stooped and picked the fallen letter from the floor.

"Thank you. Um-um-um-um-um. Oh, yes, 'Piece of good news for you. I write at once so that you may make your plans accordingly. I told you in my last letter, did I not, of my sister-in-law's sudden death? Now my brother is very anxious that I should make my home with him. So I am leaving Mrs. Hubbard. She wishes me to say that if you care to have my place as her companion, she will be very pleased to have you. I have been with her for thirteen years and she has always treated me like an equal. She is very considerate and there is practically nothing to do but to exercise the dear little dogs. The salary is thirty-five pounds a year.'"

"But," said Marsh, looking at the envelope in his hand, "the letter is addressed to Miss Marsh. I'd intended to ask you about that; don't they know you're married?"

"No. I haven't told them."

"What a lark!" said Reggie, slapping his knee. "You could go back to Tunbridge Wells, and none of the old frumps would ever know you'd been married at all."

"Why, so I could!" said Nora in a breathless tone. She gave Hornby a strange look and turned toward the window to hide the fact that she had flushed to the roots of her hair.

Her brother gave her a long look.

"Just clear out for a minute, Reg. I want to talk with Nora."

"Right-o!" He disappeared in the direction of the shed.

"Nora, do you want to clear out?"

"What on earth makes you think that I do?"

"You gave Reg such a look when he mentioned it."

"I'm only bewildered. Tell me, did Frank know anything about this?"

"My dear, how could he?"

"It's most extraordinary; he was talking about my going away only a moment before you came."

"About your going away? But why?"

She realized that she had betrayed herself and kept silent.

"Nora, for goodness' sake tell me if there's anything the matter. Can't you see it's now or never? You're keeping something back from me. I could see it all along, ever since I came. Aren't you two getting on well together?"

"Not very," she said in a low, shamed tone.

"Why in heaven's name didn't you let me know."

"I was ashamed."

"But you just now said he was kind to you."

"I have nothing to reproach him with."

"I tell you I felt there was something wrong. I knew you couldn't be happy with him. A girl like you, with your education and refinement, and a man like him—a hired man! Oh, the whole thing would have been ridiculous if it weren't horrible. Not that he's not a good fellow and as straight as they make them, but—— Well, thank God, I'm here and you've got this chance."

"Eddie, what do you mean?"

"You're not fit for this life. I mean you've got your chance to go back home to England. For God's sake, take it! In six months' time, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream."

The expression of her face was so extraordinary, such a combination of fear, bewilderment, and something that was far deeper than dismay, that he stared at her for a moment without speaking.

"Nora, what's the matter!"

"I don't know," she said hoarsely.

But she did, she did.

At his words, the picture of the little shack—her home now—as it had looked the first time she saw it in all its comfortlessness, its untidy squalor, rose before her eyes. And she saw a lonely man clumsily busying himself about the preparation of an illy-cooked meal, and later sitting smoking in the desolate silence. She saw him go forth to his daily toil with all the lightness gone from his step, to return at nightfall, with a heaviness born of more than mere physical fatigue, to the same bleak bareness.

And she saw herself, back at Tunbridge Wells. No longer the mistress, but the underpaid underling. Eating once more off fine old china, at a table sparkling with silver and glass. But the bread was bitter, the bread of the dependent. And she came and went at another's bidding, and the yoke was not easy. She trod once more, round and round, in that little circle which she knew so well. She used to think that the walls would stifle her. How much more would they not stifle her now that she had known this larger freedom?

"I say," said Reggie's voice from the doorway, "here's someone coming to see you."



CHAPTER XVII

It was Mrs. Sharp, making her laborious way slowly up the path.

"Why," said Nora, in a low voice, "it's Mrs. Sharp, the wife of our neighbor. Whatever brings her here on foot! She never walks a step if she can help it."

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sharp," she called.

Mrs. Sharp had apparently come on some sudden impulse. Usually, well as they knew each other by this time, she always made more or less of a toilet before having her husband drive her over. But to-day she had evidently come directly from her work. She wore a battered old skirt and a faded shirt-waist, none too clean. On her head was an old sunbonnet, the strings of which were tied in a hard knot under her fat chin.

"Come right in," said Nora cordially. "You do look warm."

"Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Taylor. Yes, I'm all in a perspiration. I've not walked so far—well, goodness alone knows when!"

"This is my brother," said Nora, presenting Eddie.

"Your brother? Is that who it is!"

"Why, you seem surprised."

Mrs. Sharp forbore any explanation for the moment. Sinking heavily into the rocking chair, she accepted with a grateful nod the fan that Nora offered her. There was nothing to do but to give her time to recover her breath. Nora and Eddie sat down and waited.

"I was so anxious," Mrs. Sharp at length managed to say, still panting—whether with exhaustion or emotion, Nora could not tell—between her sentences, "I simply couldn't stay indoors—another minute. I went out to see if I—could catch a sight of Sid. And I walked on, and on. And then I saw the rig what's—outside. And it gave me such a turn! I thought it was the inspector. I just had to come—I was that nervous——!"

"But why? Is anything the matter?" asked Nora, completely puzzled.

"You're not going to tell me you don't know about it? When Sid and Frank haven't been talking about anything else since Frank found it?"

"Found it? Found what?"

"The weed," said Mrs. Sharp simply.

"You've got it then," said Marsh, with a slight gesture of his head toward the table where Nora's flowers made a bright spot of color.

"It's worse here, at Taylor's. But we've got it, too."

"What does she mean?" Nora addressed herself to Eddie, abandoning all hope of getting anything out of her friend.

"We can't make out who reported us. It isn't as if we had any enemies," went on Mrs. Sharp gloomily, as if Nora wasn't present, or at least hadn't spoken. "It isn't as if we had any enemies," she repeated. "Goodness knows we've never done anything to anybody."

"Oh, there's always someone to report you. After all, it's not to be wondered at. No one's going to run the risk of letting it get on his own land."

"And she has them in the house as if they were flowers!" exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, addressing the ceiling.

"Eddie, I insist that you tell me what you two are talking about," demanded Nora hotly.

"My dear," said her brother, "these pretty little flowers which you've picked to make your shack look bright and—and homelike, may mean ruin."

"Eddie!"

"You must have heard—why, I remember telling you about it myself—about this mustard, this weed. We farmers in Canada have three enemies to fight: frost, hail and weed."

Mrs. Sharp confirmed his words with a despairing nod of her head.

"We was hailed out last year," she said. "Lost our whole crop. Never got a dollar for it. And now! If we lose it this year, too—why, we might just as well quit and be done with it."

"When it gets into your crop," Marsh explain for Nora's benefit, "you've got to report it. If you don't, one of the neighbors is sure to. And then they send an inspector along, and if he condemns it, why you just have to destroy the whole crop, and all your year's work goes for nothing. You're lucky, in that case, if you've got a bit of money laid by in the bank and can go on till next year when the next crop comes along."

"We've only got a quarter-section and we've got five children. It's not much money you can save then."

"But——" began Nora.

"Are they out with the inspector now?" asked Marsh.

"Yes. He came out from Prentice this morning early."

"This will be a bad job for Frank."

"Yes, but he hasn't got the mouths to feed that we have. I can't think what's to become of us. He can hire out again."

Nora's face flushed.

"I—I wonder why he hasn't told me anything about it. I asked him, only this morning, what was troubling him. I was sure there was something, but he said not," she said sadly.

"Oh, I guess he's always been in the habit of keeping his troubles to himself, and you haven't taught him different yet."

Nora was about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the unobservant Eddie noted with approval.

"Well," he said as cheerfully as he could, "you must hope for the best, Mrs. Sharp."

"Sid says we've only got it in one place. But perhaps he's only saying it, so as I shouldn't worry. But you know what them inspectors are; they don't lose nothin' by it. It don't matter to them if you starve all winter!"

Suddenly she began to cry. Great sobs wracked her heavy frame. The big tears rolled down her cheeks. Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hardships she had endured, or of the little one she had lost. She was greatly moved, for this good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.

"Oh, don't—don't cry, dear Mrs. Sharp. After all, it may all turn out right."

"They won't condemn the whole crop unless it's very bad, you know," Marsh reminded her. "Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company."

Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking. She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.

"What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the weed!" She had to stop again for a moment. "I can't bear any more. If we lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do from the beginning. But Sid—Sid always had his heart set on farming."

"But you couldn't go back now," said Nora, her face aglow, "you couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebody else. And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your face."

"You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd never left home and come to this country, that I do!"

"How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd never have had a chance back home. You know that."

"Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that. Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid."

"Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?" said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs. Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.

"It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that," Nora went on, her eyes dark with earnestness.

Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head slightly. He wanted Nora to finish.

"What if it is the others who reap the harvest? Don't you really believe that those who break the ground are rewarded in a way that the later comers never dream of? I do."

"She's right there," broke in Marsh. "I shall never forget, Mrs. Sharp, what I felt when I saw my first crop spring up—the thought that never since the world began had wheat grown on that little bit of ground before. Oh, it was wonderful! I wouldn't go back to England now, to live, for anything in the world. I couldn't breathe."

"You're a man. You have the best of it, and all the credit."

"Not with everyone," said Nora. She fell on her knees beside the elder woman's chair and stroked her work-roughened old hand.

"The outsiders don't know. You mustn't blame them, how could they? It's only those who've lived on the prairie who could know that the chief burden of the hardships of opening up a new country falls upon the women. But the men who are the husbands, they know, and in their hearts they give us all credit."

"I guess they do, Mrs. Sharp," said Marsh earnestly.

Mrs. Sharp smiled gratefully on Nora through her tears.

"Thank you for speaking so kindly to me, my dear. I know that you are right in every blessed thing you've said. You must excuse me for being a bit downhearted for the moment. The fact is, I'm that nervous that I hardly know what I'm saying. But you've done me no end of good."

"That's right." Nora got slowly to her feet. "Sid and Frank will be here in a minute or two, I am sure."

"And you're perfectly right, both of you," Mrs. Sharp repeated. "I couldn't go back and live in England again. If we lose our crop, well, we must hang on some way till next year. We shan't starve, exactly. A person's got to take the rough with the smooth; and take it by and large, it's a good country."

"Ah, now you're talking more like yourself, the self that used to cheer me up when——"

Turning, she saw her husband standing in the doorway.

"Frank!"

He was looking at her with quite a new expression. How long had he been there? Had he heard all she had been saying to Mrs. Sharp, carried away by the emotion aroused by the secret conflict within her own heart? She both hoped and feared that he had.

"Where's Sid?" said Mrs. Sharp, starting to her feet.

"Why, he's up at your place. Hulloa, Ed. Saw you coming along in the rig earlier in the morning. But I was surprised to find Reg here. Didn't recognize him so far away in his store clothes."

"Must have been a pleasant surprise for you," said Hornby with conviction.

"What's happened? Tell me what's happened."

"Mrs. Sharp came on here because she was too anxious to stay at home," Nora explained.

"Oh, you're all right."

"We are?" Mrs. Sharp gave a sobbing gasp of relief.

"Only a few acres got to go. That won't hurt you."

"Thank God for that! And it's goin' to be the best crop we ever had. It's the finest country in the world!" Her face was beaming.

"You'd better be getting back," warned Taylor. "Sid's taken the inspector up to give him some dinner."

"He hasn't!" said Mrs. Sharp indignantly. "If that isn't just like a man." She made a gesture condemning the sex. "It's a mercy there's plenty in the house. But I must be getting along right away," she bustled.

"But you mustn't think of walking all that way back in the hot sun," expostulated Nora. "There's Eddie's rig. Reggie, here, will drive you over."

"Oh, thank you, kindly. I'm not used to walking very much, you know, and I'd be all tuckered out by the time I got back home. Good-by, all. Good afternoon, Mrs. Taylor."

"Good afternoon. Reggie, you won't mind driving Mrs. Sharp back. It's only just a little over a mile."

"Not a bit of it," said Hornby good-naturedly.

"I'll come and help you put the mare in," said Marsh, starting to follow Hornby and Mrs. Sharp down the path.

"I guess it's a relief to you, now you know," he called back to his brother-in-law.

"Terrible. I want to have a talk with you presently, Ed. I'll go on out with him, I guess," he said, turning to his wife.

She nodded silently. She was grateful to him for leaving her alone for a time. They would have much to say to each other a little later.

"Hold on, Ed, I'm coming."

"Right you are!"

He ran lightly down the path where his brother-in-law stood waiting for him.

She stood for a long moment looking down at the innocent-looking little blossoms on her table. And they could cause such heartbreak and desolation, ranking, as engines of destruction, with the frost and the hail! Could make such seasoned and tried women as Mrs. Sharp weep and bring the gray look of apprehension into the eyes of a man like her husband. Those innocent-looking little flowers!

What must he have felt as he saw her arranging them so light-heartedly in her pudding-dish that morning. And yet, rather than mar her pleasure, he had choked back the impulse to speak. Yes, that was like him. For a moment they blurred as she looked at them. She checked her inclination to throw them into the stove, to burn them to ashes so that they could work their evil spells no more. Later on, she would do so. But she wanted them there until he returned.

She looked about the little room. Yes, it was pretty and homelike, deserving all the nice things people said about it. And what a real pleasure she had had in transforming it, from the dreadful little place it was when she first saw it, into what it was now. Not that she could ever have worked the miracle alone.

She smiled sadly to herself. How all her thoughts, like homing pigeons, had the one goal!

And how proud he was of it all. With what delighted, almost childlike interest, he had watched each little change. And how he had acquiesced in every suggestion and helped her to plan and carry out the things she could not have done alone.

She lived again those long winter evenings when, snug and warm, the grim cruelty of the storms shut out, she had read aloud to him while he worked on making the chairs.

How long would it keep its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cushions would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them came into her mind. But, no. She certainly had enough to do. And, besides—the thought thrilled her with delight—he would not like having anyone else to touch them!

And she? She would be back in that old life where such simple little things were a commonplace, a matter of course. And what interest would they be to her? She could see herself ripping the ribands from an old hat to tie back curtains for Mrs. Hubbard! Certainly that excellent lady would be astonished if she suggested doing anything of the sort, and small wonder. She hired the proper people to keep her house in order just as she was going to hire her.

She found it in her heart to be sorry for Mrs. Hubbard. She had always had her money. The joy of these little miracles of contrivance had never been hers. She had bought her home. She had never, in all her pampered life, made one.

Home! What a desolating word it could be to the homeless. She knew. Since her far-off childhood, she had never called a place 'home' till now. And just as the word began to take on a new meaning, she was going to leave it! Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she would ever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad. Regret! why the thought of leaving tore her very heartstrings.

What if it had been only a few short months that had passed since then? One's life is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by emotion and feeling. She had crowded more emotion into these few short months than in all the rest of her dull, uneventful life put together.

Fear, terror, hatred, murderous rage, bitter humiliation, she had felt them all within the small compass of these four walls. And greatest of all—why try to deceive her own heart any longer—here she had known love. She had fought off the acknowledgment of this the crowning experience and humiliation as long as she could. She had called on her pride, that pride which had never before failed her. And now, to herself, she had to acknowledge that she was beaten.

They were all against her. Her own brother had spoken, only a few moments ago, of her marriage as horrible. "A girl like you and a hired man!" She could hear him now. And he had spoken of her leaving as a matter of course. He couldn't have done it if he had cared. He liked the comforts that a woman brings to a house, the little touches that no man's hand can give, that a woman, even as unskillful as she, brings about instinctively, that was all. Almost any other woman could do as well. He did not prize her for herself.

And she would go back to England and, as Hornby had gleefully said, no one need ever know. She would have a place, on sufferance, in other people's homes. The only change that the year would have made in her life would be that the check in her pocket, safely invested, might save her eventually, when she was too old to serve as a companion, from being dependant on actual charity. And to all outward intents and purposes, the year would be as if it had never been.

"In six months, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream," her brother had promised her. Was there ever a man since the world began that understood a woman! A dream! The only time in her life that she had really lived. No, all the rest of her life might be of the stuff that dreams are made on, but not this. And like a sleep-walker, dead to all sensation, she must go through with it.

And she was not yet thirty. All of her father's family—and she was physically the daughter of her father, not of her mother—lived to such a great age. In all human probability there would be at least fifty years of life left to her. Fifty years with all that made life worth living behind one!

She supposed he would eventually get a divorce. She remembered to have heard that such things were easy out here, not like it was in England. And he was a man who would be sure to marry again, he would want a family.

And it was some other woman who would be the mother of his children!

The wave of passion that swept her now, made up of bitter regret, of longing and of jealousy, overwhelmed her as never before.

She had been pacing the room up and down, up and down, stopping now and then to touch some little familiar object with a touch that was a caress.

But at this last thought, she sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands.

The storm of weeping which shook her had nearly spent itself, when she heard steps coming toward the house, a step that her heart had known for many a day. Drying her eyes quickly, she went to the window and made a pretense of looking out that he might not see her tear-stained face. She made a last call on her pride and strength to carry her through the coming interview. He should never know what leaving cost her; that she promised herself.



CHAPTER XVIII

"Ed drove over with Reg and Emma; I guess he won't be very long. There was something he wanted to say to old man Sharp that he'd forgot about."

"Then you didn't get your talk with him?"

She was glad of that. It was better to have their own talk first. But as it had been he who had broached the subject of her leaving, it was he who must reopen it.

"No, but I guess anything I've got to say to him will keep till he gets back. Ed's thinking of buying a clearing-machine that's for sale over Prentice way."

"Yes, he told me."

Without turning her head, she could tell that he was looking around for the matches. He never could remember that they were kept in a jar over on the shelf back of the stove. He was going to smoke his pipe, of course. When men were nervous about anything they always flew to tobacco. Women were denied that poor consolation. But she, too, felt the necessity of having something to occupy her hands. She went back to the table, and taking some of Frank's thick woolen socks from her basket, sat down and began mechanically to darn them. She purposely placed herself so that he could only see her profile. Even then, he would see that her eyes were still red; she hadn't had time to bathe them.

"I suppose I look a sight, but poor Mrs. Sharp was so upset! She broke down and cried and of course I've been crying, too. I'm so thankful it's turned out all right for her. Poor thing, I never saw her in such a state!"

"They've got five children to feed. I guess it would make a powerful lot of difference to them," he said quietly.

"I wish you'd told me all about it before. I felt that something was worrying you, and I didn't know what." There was a pause. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I saved the crop, there didn't seem any use fussing, and if I didn't, you'd know soon enough."

"How could you bear to let me put those dreadful flowers here in the house?" she said, pointing to the bowl on the table.

"Oh, I guess I didn't mind, if it gave you any pleasure. You didn't know they was only a weed and a poisonous one for us farmers. You thought them darned pretty."

"That was very kind of you, Frank," said Nora. Her voice shook a little in spite of her effort to control it.

"I guess it's queer that a darned little flower like that should be able to do so much damage."

That subject exhausted, there came another pause. He was very evidently waiting her lead. Could Eddie have told him anything about the news from England? No, he hadn't had any opportunity. Besides it would have been very unlike Eddie, who, as a general rule, had a supreme talent for minding his own affairs.

"How did it happen that you didn't tell me that you had written to Eddie?"

"I guess I forgot."

She waited a few moments to make sure that her voice was quite steady:

"Frank, Eddie brought me some letters from home—from England, I mean—to-day. I've had an offer of a job back in England."

He got up slowly and went over to the corner where the broom hung to get some straws to run through the mouthpiece of his pipe. His face was turned from her, so that she could not see that he had closed his eyes for a moment and that his mouth was drawn with pain.

When he turned he had resumed his ordinary expression. His voice was perfectly steady when he spoke:

"An offer of a job? Gee! I guess you'll jump at that."

"It's funny it should have come just when you had been talking of my going away."

"Very."

Not even a comment. Oh, why didn't he say that he would be glad to have her gone, and be done with it! Anything, almost, would be easier to bear than this total lack of interest. She tried another tack.

"Have you any—any objection?"

"I guess it wouldn't make a powerful lot of difference to you if I had." He could actually smile, his good-natured, indulgent smile, which she knew so well.

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, I guess you only stayed on here because you had to."

Nora's work dropped in her lap.

"Is life always like that?" she said with bitter sadness. "The things you've wanted so dreadfully seem only to bring you pain when they come."

He gave her a swift glance, but went on smoking quietly. She went over to the window again and stood looking out at the stretch of prairie. Presently she spoke in a low voice, but her words were addressed as much to herself as to him:

"Month after month, this winter, I used to sit here looking out at the prairie. Sometimes I wanted to scream at the top of my voice. I felt that I must break that awful silence or go mad. There were times when the shack was like a prison. I thought I should never escape. I was hemmed in by the snow and the cold and the stillness; cut off from everything and everybody, from all that had been the world I knew."

"Are you going to quit right now with Ed?" he asked gently.

Nora went slowly back to her chair. "You seem in a great hurry to be rid of me," she said, with the flicker of a smile.

"Well, I guess we ain't made a great success of our married life, my girl." He went over to the stove to knock the ashes from his pipe. "It's rum, when you come to figure it out," he said, when it was once more lighted; "I thought I could make you do everything I wanted, just because I was bigger and stronger. It sure did look like I held a straight flush. And you beat me."

"I?" said Nora in astonishment.

"Why, sure. You don't mean to say you didn't know that?"

"I don't know at all what you mean."

"I guess I was pretty ignorant about women," his began pacing up and down the floor as he talked. "I guess I didn't know how strong a woman could be. You was always givin' way; you done everything I told you. And, all the time, you was keeping something back from me that I couldn't get at. Whenever I thought I was goin' to put my hand on you—zip! You was away again. I guess I found I'd only caught hold of a shadow."

"I don't know what more you expected. I didn't know you wanted anything more!"

"I guess I wanted love," he said in a tone so low that she barely caught it.

He stood over by the table, looking down on her from his great height. His face was flushed, but his eyes were steady and unashamed.

"You!"

She looked at him in absolute consternation. Her breath came in hurried gasps. But her heart sang in her breast and the little pathetic droop of her mouth disappeared. Her telltale eyes dropped on her work. Not yet, not yet; she was greedy to hear more.

"I know you now less well than when you'd been only a week up to Ed's." He resumed his pacing up and down. "I guess I've lost the trail. I'm just beating round, floundering in the bush."

"I never knew you wanted love," she said softly.

"I guess I didn't know it until just lately, either."

"I suppose parting's always rather painful," she said with just the beginning of a little smile creeping round the corners of her lips.

"If you go back—when you go back," he corrected himself, "to the old country, I guess—I guess you'll never want to come back."

"Perhaps you'll come over to England yourself, one of these days. If you only have a couple of good years, you could easily shut up the place and run over for the winter," she said shyly.

"I guess that would be a dangerous experiment. You'll be a lady in England. I guess I'd still be only the hired man."

"You'd be my husband."

"N-o-o-o," he said, with a shake of the head. "I guess I wouldn't chance it."

She tried another way. She was sure of her happiness now; she could play with it a little longer.

"You'll write to me now and then, and tell me how you're getting on, won't you?"

"Will you care to know?" he asked quickly.

"Why, yes, of course I shall."

"Well," he said, throwing back his head proudly, "I'll write and tell you if I'm making good. If I ain't, I guess I shan't feel much like writing."

"But you will make good, Frank. I know you well enough for that."

"Do you?" His tone was grateful.

"I have learned to—to respect you during these months we've lived together. You have taught me a great deal. All sorts of qualities which I used to think of great value seem unimportant to me now. I have changed my ideas about many things."

"We have each learned something, I guess," he said generously.

Nora gave him a grateful glance. He stood for a moment at the far end of the room and watched her roll up the socks she had just darned. How neat and deft she was. After all, there was something in being a lady, as Mrs. Sharp had said. Neither she nor Gertie, both capable women, could do things in quite the same way that Nora did.

Oh, why had she come into his life at all! She had given him the taste for knowledge, for better things of all sorts; and now she was going away, going away forever. He had no illusions about her ever returning. Not she, once she had escaped from a life she hated. Had she not just said as much when she said that the shack had seemed like a prison to her?

And now, in place of going on in the old way that had always seemed good enough to him before he knew anything better, mulling about, getting his own meals, with only one thought, one ambition in the world—the success of his crops and the acquisition of more land that he might some day in the dim future have a few thousands laid by—he would always be wanting something he could never get without her: more knowledge of the things that made life fuller and wider and broader, the things that she prized and had known from her childhood.

It was cruel and unfair of her to have awakened the desire in him only to abandon him. To have held the cup of knowledge to his lips for one brief instant and then leave him to go through life with his thirst unslaked! Not that she was intentionally cruel. No, he thought he knew all of her little faults of temper and of pride by this. Her heart was too kindly to let her wound him knowingly, witness her tenderness to poor Mrs. Sharp only this afternoon. But it hurt, none the less. She had said that she had not known he wanted love. How should she have guessed it?

But the real thing that tortured him most was the fact that he wanted her, her, her. She had been his, his woman. No other woman in this broad earth could take her place.

A little sound like a groan escaped him.

"You'll think of me sometimes, my girl, won't you?" he said huskily.

"I don't suppose I shall be able to help it." She smiled at him over her shoulder, as she crossed the room to restore her basket to its place.

"I was an ignorant, uneducated man. I didn't know how to treat you properly. I wanted to make you happy, but I didn't seem to know just how to do it."

"You've never been unkind to me, Frank. You've been very patient with me!"

"I guess you'll be happier away from me, though. And I'll be able to think that you're warm and comfortable and at home, and that you've plenty to eat."

"Do you think that's all I want?" she suddenly flashed at him.

He gave her a quick glance and looked away immediately.

"I couldn't expect you to stay on here, not when you've got a chance of going back to the old country. This life is all new to you. You know that one."

"Oh, yes, I know it: I should think I did!" She gave a little mirthless laugh, and went over to her chair again.

"At eight o'clock every morning a maid will bring me tea and hot water. And I shall get up, and I shall have breakfast. And, presently, I shall interview the cook, and I shall order luncheon and dinner. And I shall brush the coats of Mrs. Hubbard's little dogs and take them for a walk on the common. All the paths on the common are asphalted, so that elderly gentlemen and lady's companions shan't get their feet wet."

"Gee, what a life!"

She hardly gave him time for his exclamation. As she went on, mirth, scorn, hatred and dismay came into her voice, but she was unconscious of it. For the moment, everything else was forgotten but the vivid picture which memory conjured up for her and which she so graphically described.

"And then, I shall come in and lunch, and after luncheon I shall go for a drive: one day we will turn to the right and one day we will turn to the left. And then I shall have tea. And then I shall go out again on the neat asphalt paths to give the dogs another walk. And then I shall change my dress and come down to dinner. And after dinner I shall play bezique with my employer; only I must take care not to beat her, because she doesn't like being beaten. And at ten o'clock I shall go to bed."

A wave of stifling recollection choked her for a moment so that she could not go on. Presently she had herself once more in hand.

"At eight o'clock next morning a maid will bring in my tea and hot water, and the day will begin again. Each day will be like every other day. And, can you believe it, there are hundreds of women in England, strong and capable, with red blood in their veins, who would be eager to get this place which is offered to me. Almost a lady—and thirty-five pounds a year!"

She did not look toward him, or she would have seen a look of wonder, of comprehension and of hope pass in turn over his face.

"It seems a bit different from the life you've had here," he said, looking out through the open doorway as if to point his meaning.

"And you," she said, turning her eyes upon him, "you will be clearing the scrub, cutting down trees, plowing the land, sowing and reaping. Every day you will be fighting something, frost, hail or weed. You will be fighting and I will know that you must conquer in the end. Where was wilderness will be cultivated land. And who knows what starving child may eat the bread that has been made from the wheat that you have grown! My life will be ineffectual and utterly useless, while yours——"

"What do you mean? Nora, Nora!" he said more to himself than to her.

"While I was talking to Mrs. Sharp just now, I didn't know what I was saying. I was just trying to comfort her when she was crying. And it seemed to me as if someone else was speaking. And I listened to myself. I thought I hated the prairie through the long winter months, and yet, somehow, it has taken hold of me. It was dreary and monotonous, and yet, I can't tear it out of my heart. There's beauty and a romance about it which fills my very soul with longing."

"I guess we all hate the prairie sometimes. But when you've once lived on it, it ain't easy to live anywhere else."

"I know the life now. It's not adventurous and exciting, as they think back home. For men and women alike, it's the same hard work from morning till night, and I know it's the women who bear the greater burden."

"The men go into the towns, they have shooting, now and then, and the changing seasons bring variety in their work; but for the women it's always the same weary round: cooking, washing, sweeping, mending, in regular and ceaseless rotation. And yet it's all got a meaning. We, too, have our part in opening up the country. We are its mothers, and the future is in us. We are building up the greatness of the nation. It needs our courage and strength and hope, and because it needs them, they come to us. Oh, Frank, I can't go back to that petty, narrow life! What have you done to me?"

"I guess if I asked you to stay now, you'd stay," he said hoarsely.

"You said you wanted love."—The lovely color flooded her face.—"Didn't you see? Love has been growing in me slowly, month by month, and I wouldn't confess it. I told myself I hated you. It's only to-day, when I had the chance of leaving you forever, that I knew I couldn't live without you. I'm not ashamed any more. Frank, my husband, I love you."

He made a stride forward as if to take her in his arms, and then stopped short, smitten by a recollection.

"I—I guess I've loved you from the beginning, Nora," he stammered.

She had risen to her feet and stood waiting him with shining eyes.

"But why do you say it as if—— What is it, Frank?"

"I can't ask you to stay on now; I guess you'll have to take that job in England, for a while, anyway."

"Why?"

"The inspector's condemned my whole crop; I'm busted."

"Oh, why didn't you tell me!"

"I just guess I couldn't. I made up my mind when I married you that I'd make good. I couldn't expect you to see that it was just bad luck. Anyone may get the weed in his crop. But, I guess a man oughtn't to have bad luck. The odds are that it's his own fault if he has."

"Ah, now I understand about your sending for Eddie."

"I wrote to him when I knew I'd been reported."

"But what are you going to do?"

"It's all right about me; I can hire out again. It's you I'm thinking of. I felt pretty sure you wouldn't go back to Ed's. I don't fancy you taking a position as lady help. I didn't know what was going to become of you, my girl. And when you told me of the job you'd been offered in England, I thought I'd have to let you go."

"Without letting me know you were in trouble!"

"Why, if I wasn't smashed up, d'you think I'd let you go? By God, I wouldn't! I'd have kept you. By God, I'd have kept you!"

"Then you're going to give up the land," she made a sweeping gesture which took in the prospect without.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I guess I can't do that. I've put too much work in it. And I've got my back up, now. I shall hire out for the summer, and next winter I can get work lumbering. The land's my own, now. I'll come back in time for the plowing next year."

He had been gazing sadly out of the door as he spoke. He turned to her now ready to bring her what comfort he could. But in place of the tearful face he had expected to see, he saw a face radiant with joy and the light of love. In her hand was a little slip of colored paper which she held out to him.

"Look!"

"What's that?"

"The nephew of the lady I was with so long—Miss Wickham, you know—has made me a present of it. Five hundred pounds. That's twenty-five hundred dollars, isn't it? You can take the quarter-section you've wanted so long, next to this one. You can get all the machinery you need. And"—she gave a little, happy, mirthful laugh—"you can get some cows! I've learned to do so many things, I guess I can learn to milk, if you'll teach me and be very, very patient about it. Anyway, it's yours to do what you like with. Now, will you keep me?"

"Oh, my girl, how shall I ever be able to repay you!"

"Good Heavens, I don't want thanks! There's nothing in all the world so wonderful as to be able to give to one you love. Frank, won't you kiss me?"

He folded her in his arms.

"I guess it's the first time you ever asked me to do that!"

"I'm sure I'm the happiest woman in all the world!" she said happily.

As they stood in the doorway, he with his arm about her, they saw Eddie coming up the path toward them.

Marsh's honest face, never a good mask for hiding his feelings, wore an expression of bewildered astonishment at their lovelike attitude.

"It's all right, old dear," said Nora with a happy laugh; "don't try to understand it, you're only a man. But I'm not going back to England, to Mrs. Hubbard and her horrid little dogs; I'm going to stay right here. This overgrown baby has worked on my feelings by pretending that he needs me."

"And now, if you'll be good enough to hurry Reggie a little, we'll all have some supper; it's long past the proper time."

And as she bustled about her preparations, her brother heard her singing one of the long-ago songs of their childhood.



* * * * *



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* * * * *



Transcriber's notes

1. Punctuation has been made regular and consistent with contemporary standards.

2. All illustrations carried the credit line: "The Canadian—Photoplay title of The Land of Promise." and "A Paramount Picture." in addition to the caption presented with each illustration in the text.

3. Contemporary spelling retained, for example: dependant, indorsement, subtile, and intrenched as used in this text.

4. Table of Contents was not present in the original text.

5. Spelling corrections: page 25, "splendid" for "spendid" ("splendid defiance"). page 227, "Antarctic" for "Antartic" ("ocean of the Antarctic").

THE END