The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.
"What kind of place did it seem to you?"
"Jolly rotten."
Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her starry glance—an invitation, or an incitement—that impelled him to continue.
"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."
The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."
"May I ask if you saw any?"
"None fit for a white man."
"My husband means none fit for a—gentleman. I liked the place."
From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.