“There you are, that is home!” exclaimed Tom Ellis, pointing away to the dots on the horizon, and at the same moment the pair of horses quickened their pace, as if they too had seen and understood that yonder was the end of the journey.
Bertha thrust her head a little forward and peered and peered; but she was so nearly blinded with the glare of the snow, that dots on the horizon were quite invisible to her.
“It is home, sweet home,” chanted Tom Ellis, in a musical baritone. He was a cheerful soul, with strong faith but little imagination, and those black dots on the distant horizon encompassed his world. “Cousin Bertha, I hope you are going to be very happy with us at Duck Flats.”
“Thank you,” replied Bertha, in a strictly non-committal tone. But all her heart was crying out against the monotonous ugliness of a landscape that had no hidden things, no mystery—which, after all, is the charm of nature—and nothing that appealed to the imagination in the slightest degree.
“It is a great land,” said Tom, with a sweep of his arm that included the whole horizon from sky to sky.
“It is certainly very big,” said Bertha, wondering if that were the right thing to say, and then she ventured a question: “What do you grow? I mean, what is there under the snow—grass?”
“Wheat is what I grow,” replied Tom, with a thrill of pride in his tone; for to him the man who grew wheat was a public benefactor. It was not his own profit that was secured merely, but the good of the world at large, since everyone needed wheat in some form or other.
“And is it all one big field?” she asked, “or are there fences under the snow?”
“Except for the fence round the house, there is not a fence for ten miles. The land is not all mine, of course; but we all grow wheat in this district, and a ridge thrown up with the plough is boundary enough,” he answered serenely.
“I should have thought that mixed farming would have paid better. I don’t think that I should like to put all my eggs in one basket,” said Bertha, with a little shrug of her shoulders under her wraps. “Suppose the wheat should fail for one year?”