“Shirking indeed!” she said tossing her pretty head. “I’ll have Mary Winkle know my husband never shirked in his life.”
In a blaze of wrath she met Ezra and ordered him to go to work and never mind riding with her till the harvest was over. She wouldn’t ride any more, she would work until she was black in the face. Shirking indeed! She’d let Mary Winkle see! And so on and so forth, till her burst of anger had spent itself.
Olive was not slow to perceive that her husband had some sort of dislike to the idea of her seeing Mr. Perseus. She could not exactly explain to herself why this should be, and she was heartily sorry for it. She had fancied that in time Mr. Perseus might possibly come to be a member of the Community. She would indeed have been frankly glad to have him become a brother, for, as far as she could judge, he seemed a man of brilliant parts, and certainly his manners were most charming. To tell the truth, she found the members as a whole very uninteresting. Mary Winkle she positively disliked, and yet she was the one nearest to her own age. She sometimes wondered how Ezra could be satisfied with the companionship of those same people, who seemed to her to be walking in such a narrow circle, and always to be saying the same things in pretty nearly the same words. Now, Mr. Perseus said such original things and in such a charming voice. Altogether it was a pity that Ezra should have taken a prejudice into his head against this stranger. Olive wondered whether, if they met, the mutual recognition of their abilities would dissipate her husband’s suspicions. Such being her notions, it was most unlucky that the first time Mr. Perseus came to see them Ezra should have been gone to Union Mills. He went so very seldom that it was a most unfortunate coincidence, as she explained to Mr. Perseus, who did not in return explain that having himself seen Ezra at Union Mills he had straightway ridden off to visit her, and ridden so hard too that his horse was in a white lather when he arrived at Perfection City by a somewhat circuitous route. Napoleon Pompey was gone, so Olive showed him where to put his horse in the dark stable so that the flies would not torment the animal. She remarked on the horse’s state and asked Mr. Perseus had he been running down cattle, and he muttered something about young horses showing every bit of work in hot weather.
He was profoundly interested in Olive’s little home. She showed him with pride the garden she had made, where already the balsams were just coming into blossom; she then took him to see the prairie chickens she was trying to rear, little black and yellow downy things, with fierce wild eyes utterly untamed and only looking out for a favourable opportunity to make a dash for freedom.
“Do you think I can ever tame them?” asked Olive, as she noted the hostile manner in which they scuttled away from her food-giving hand.
“If anyone could tame them you could, the ungrateful little brutes!” remarked Mr. Perseus.
“I don’t see that it is ungrateful of them to resent being taken from their proper home and natural mother to be put under a fat stupid hen,” said Olive.
“No, but it is rank ingratitude not to be tame to you,” said he.
“I don’t think you are truthful,” said Olive bluntly.
“Why?” asked Mr. Perseus.