"Angus Mackay, you make me tired!" Kathleen told him. "What do I care about your clothes? You're still thinking of yourself as an unbidden guest, after I've told you you're more than welcome. I'm not going to let you sit out in the kitchen like an Indian. Come along, now, like a good boy."
As there was no way out of it, Angus followed her, feeling very conscious of his worn riding-clothes. But as everybody was playing cards nobody cast more than a casual glance in his direction, save Faith Winton, who rose and came toward them.
"Kathleen, I've driven my unfortunate partner nearly crazy. He's too polite to tell me what he thinks of my play, but see how wistfully he's looking at you."
Kathleen laughed.
"Well, take care of Angus, then. And keep his mind off his clothes. He's worrying because he isn't dressed like a head waiter." With a nod she left them and seated herself at the vacant table.
"They were relieved to get rid of me," Faith Winton laughed. "Shall we sit down and talk? I haven't seen you for weeks. Why didn't you come to see me once in awhile?"
"I wanted to, but somehow—"
"Never mind excuses. When I get a place of my own perhaps you will be more neighborly. I've made up my mind to build a house on my ranch in the spring."
She told him her plans. She would have a cottage built, buy a few head of stock and some chickens, break a few acres as a start and set out fruit trees. Between the rows she would grow small fruits, feed, vegetables. When the trees came into bearing she would have an assured, definite income.
Angus listened in grim silence. He had heard it all before from the hopeful lips of new settlers. Theoretically, so many bushels may be grown to the acre, a tree so many years old will bear so many boxes of fruit. This is quite unassailable, proven by actual experience, by incontestable data, set out in reports which are the gospel of the new and especially the inexperienced settler. He seizes these facts avidly, but overlooks or refuses to consider a number of other things, such as drought, hail, frosts early or late, winter-killed trees, pests, poor years, low prices, and a hundred other factors which taken together make those actually used entirely misleading. But the one big factor which the inexperienced invariably refuse to consider at all, is that inexperience itself.