"I'll see to it to-morrow," he added.
The week that elapsed prior to the event which all were looking forward to was a busy one for Sinclair and his two companions.
The house, with its farm-buildings, although sound and in a fairly good condition, had been sadly neglected, and needed a considerable amount of attention to render them clean and presentable and worthy of their new tenant.
The waggons and carts wanted repairing,—nuts were missing, bolts were loose, damaged spokes required replacing, and loosened tyres demanded skilled handling.
Harness was not much better: where buckles had fled, cord or thong had been substituted; broken straps were found pieced together with string; and, in fact, every contrivance seemed to have been adopted to patch or conceal a flaw rather than spend a penny on a necessary repair.
Agricultural implements were in a like shady condition; many being cast aside as valueless which a trifling outlay would easily restore to utility again.
The easy, negligent, and happy-go-lucky disposition of the Irishman was so stamped on all around, that, had he not already known it, it would have been a comparatively easy matter to have arrived at the conclusion, from the condition in which things had been left, that the last tenant must have been one of Erin's sons.
At the Ranch, Mrs. Ranger, with the two women, were fully employed, or so they thought they were, and endeavoured to impress everyone else with their own belief that they were. And if the difficulty experienced in getting a plain answer to an ordinary question might be regarded as some proof of the truth of the representation, there was abundant evidence of the fact from that source alone.
Ranger was about the only person who seemed to be unmoved by pending events. To judge from the equanimity of his temper, and the apparent unconcern manifested at all that was transpiring, or the little heed he gave to the flurry and excitement in the house, one might well have supposed him to be entirely engrossed with the cares of the farm and the duties which its out-door work involved.
Jessie, as the prospective chief actor in the coming ceremony, was anything but an unmoved spectator of what was taking place.