Part 14 (1/2)

”That would be very wrong; but the need for continual effort and the strain of making ends meet, with the chance of being ruined by a frozen crop, have pa.s.sed. I believe he misses the excitement of it.”

”Then I gather that he built up this great farm?”

”Yes; from a free quarter-section. He and my mother started in a two-roomed shack. They were both from Ontario, but she died several years ago.” The girl paused. ”Sometimes I think she must have had remarkable courage, I can remember her as always ready in an emergency, always tranquil.”

George glanced at her as she stood, finely posed, looking out across the waste of gra.s.s with gravely steady eyes, and it occurred to him that she resembled her mother in the respects she had mentioned.

Nevertheless, he felt inclined to wonder how she had got her grace and refinement. Alan Grant was forceful and rather primitive.

”Have you spent much of your time here?” he asked.

”No,” she answered. ”My mother was once a school-teacher, and she must have had ambitious views for me. When the farm began to prosper, I was sent to Toronto. After that I went to Montreal, and finally to England.”

”You must be fond of traveling.”

”Oh,” she said, with some reserve, ”I had thought of taking up a profession.”

”And you have abandoned the idea?”

She looked at him quietly, wondering whether she should answer.

”I had no alternative,” she said. ”I began to realize it after my mother's death. Then my father was badly hurt in an accident with a team, and I came back. He has n.o.body else to look after him, and he is getting on in life.”

Her words conveyed no hint of the stern struggle between duty and inclination, but George guessed it. This girl, he thought, was one not to give up lightly the career she had chosen.

Then she changed the subject with a smile.

”I suspect that my father approves of you, perhaps because of what you are doing with the land. I think I may say that if you have any little difficulty, or are short of any implements that would be useful, you need only come across to us.”

”Thank you,” George responded quietly.

”Mr. West mentioned that you were on a farm in this country once before. Why did you give it up?”

”Somebody left me a little money.”

”Then what brought you back?”

She was rather direct, but that is not unusual in the West, and George was mildly flattered by the interest she displayed.

”It's a little difficult to answer. For one thing, I was beginning to feel that I was taking life too easily in England, It's a habit that grows on one.”

He had no desire to conceal the fact that he had come out on Sylvia's behalf--it never occurred to him to mention it. He was trying to a.n.a.lyze the feelings which had rendered the sacrifice he made in leaving home a little easier.

”I don't think the dread of acquiring that habit is common among your people,” Flora said mischievously. ”It doesn't sound like a very convincing reason.”

”No,” replied George, with a smile. ”Still, it had some weight. You see, it isn't difficult to get lazy and slack, and I'd done nothing except a little fis.h.i.+ng and shooting for several years. I didn't want to sink into a mere lounger about country houses and clubs. It's pleasant, but too much of it is apt to unfit one for anything else.”

”You believe it's safer, for example, to haul stovewood home through the Canadian frost or drive a plow under the scorching sun?”

”Yes; I think I feel something of the kind.”

Flora somewhat astonished him by her scornful laugh.