Part 45 (2/2)
”Gerald wanted me to make him our agent, and I refused,” he ended.
She was conscious of disappointment, though she appreciated his candor.
”I'm afraid he will find things hard. Of course, it's his own fault, but that won't make his difficulties lighter. Couldn't you have taken the risk of giving him another chance?”
”No,” said Harding. ”I wanted to help him, for your sake, but I couldn't give him the post. You see, I was acting for others as well as for myself.” He hesitated before he added: ”I felt that we must have the best man we could get.”
”And you could get more reliable men than my brother! Unfortunately, it's true. But the others were willing; Kenwyne told me so.”
He looked at her in surprise, for there was a faint hardness in her voice.
”I don't think they quite understood how important the matter is.
Anyway, they left it to me and I felt forced to do what seemed best for all.”
”Well,” she said, as if puzzled, ”Gerald certainly wronged you.”
”That didn't count; not the wrong you mean. The greatest injury he could have done me would have been in giving you to Brand. However, it was not this, but his unfitness for our work that made me refuse him.”
He had blundered, and Beatrice felt hurt. She could have forgiven him for bitterly resenting Gerald's attempt to separate them, but he seemed to consider that comparatively unimportant. There was a hard strain in him; perhaps her father had been right in thinking him too deeply imbued with the commercial spirit.
He helped her to the saddle, and the misunderstanding was forgotten as they rode in confidential talk across the shadowy plain until the lights of the Grange twinkled out ahead. Harding left her at the forking of the trail, but he was thoughtful as he trotted home alone. He must exercise care and tact in future. Beatrice was proud, and he feared that he had not altogether won her yet.
CHAPTER XXVI
DROUGHT
The wheat was growing tall and changing to a darker shade; when the wind swept through it, it undulated like the waves of a vast green sea, rippling silver and white where the light played on the bending blades.
Harding lay among the dusty gra.s.s in a dry sloo, and Hester sat beside him in the blue shadow of the big hay wagon. Since six o'clock that morning Harding and Devine had been mowing prairie hay. They had stopped long enough to eat the lunch Hester had brought them; and now Devine had returned to his work, and sat jolting in the driving-seat of a big machine as he guided three powerful horses along the edge of the gra.s.s.
It went down in dry rows, ready for gathering, before the glistening knife, and a haze of dust and a cloud of flies followed the team across the sloo. Harding's horses stood switching their tails in the suns.h.i.+ne that flooded the plain with a dazzling glare.
”It was rough on Fred that you wouldn't let him finish his pipe,”
Harding said.
”He went obediently,” Hester answered with a smile. ”I wanted to talk to you.”
”I suspected something of the kind; but I can't see why you must stop me now.”
”You are away at daybreak and come home late.”
”Very well,” said Harding resignedly. ”But I've got to clean up this sloo by dark.”
”Then you're not going to the Grange? You haven't been since Sunday.”
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