"Shall you do that, when you're quite grown up, Harry?" asked Pobbles. "I think I shall. I know a good deal about it already, and I can easily learn some more."
Jane forbore to rebuke his assumption of knowledge, having one to make on her own account. "I used to think I should hate having to sew and learn to cook," she said. "But I shouldn't mind it if I was living in a log cabin. I can cook some things already. I suppose it would be more fun to be a man, but a woman would have to ride and all that, if she lived in a new country; and she could ride astride."
"It's only when things begin to get a little settled that women go at all," said Harry, dashing these dreams. "The real pioneers go alone, and carry everything they want with them on horseback. It must be glorious to ride for day after day in a country where no white man has ever been before, and at last to come to some lovely place where he can make a settlement."
"There's no reason why a woman shouldn't do that too," said Jane. "She could go alone herself, if the man didn't want her. She could dress like a man."
Pobbles exploded with mirth, at some cryptic joke of his own. "A pretty fool she'd look if the Redskins caught her!" he said.
"Shut up," said Jane sharply, relinquishing her dreams of a woman's empire, "or I'll punch your head."
"Shut up both of you," said Harry, "and don't spoil things by quarrelling. You'd never do for that sort of life if you couldn't spend five minutes without flying at one another. You'd have to spend weeks and months together without seeing another living soul."
"But you'd be there," said Pobbles. "You'd keep her in order."
"Shall you ever do it, Harry, do you think?" asked Jane. "I should like to come too, if you do. I could wait behind till you'd found the right place, and then Tom and I could come on together."
"Perhaps I shall some day," said Harry, for whom time and youth seemed to stretch ahead illimitably. "But not until after I've been in the army for some years. And I couldn't be away long from Royd. I might just go pioneering, and leave somebody else to work up the place I've found."