“Then I should fail too, and pretty quickly, I can tell you. But don’t talk about it; the bare idea of such a thing gets on my nerves sometimes, and then I can’t sleep in the nights,” he answered.
“But if you feel like that, why do you take such a risk?” persisted Bertha, who could not understand this sort of vicarious tribulation.
“Because the profits are greater, and there is less outlay in proportion,” he replied. “I grow wheat, and I grow nothing else. Very well, then, I only need the implements for wheat-growing, and most of them I can hire at reasonable rates, which pays me, don’t you see. Then, when my wheat is harvested and thrashed, my cares for the year are over, and I have nothing to do but to plough for next year’s crop. Of course, the thing can’t go on for always, for it stands to reason that you can’t grow the same crop year after year without the ground becoming impoverished. When that time comes, however, I shall sell the land and move on into a new district, where I can start afresh. That is the way that money is made, little cousin. There is risk in it, I grant you, but that is half the fun; it takes from the dead-level monotony of the affair.”
“And does Grace like that sort of thing—the risk, I mean, and being dragged up by the roots, and dumped down in a fresh place when the impoverished land makes a move necessary?” asked Bertha, with some curiosity. She was thinking that if it were herself she should just hate it all.
Tom Ellis shook his head with a merry laugh. “I am afraid that my wife got some very stodgy, old-fashioned notions from living so long in Nova Scotia. Why, she was even saying the other day that she meant to have a flower garden next summer, an awful waste of ground, really, but you can’t get women to be practical. And she insists on my keeping a cow!”
“But why shouldn’t you keep a cow?” asked Bertha, in a puzzled tone, quite unable to see where the enormity of such a course came in.
He laughed again, and told her that she would understand the situation better when she had lived eight or nine years on the prairies.
“Which I never, never will, if by any means in my power I can get away!” said Bertha; but she said it to herself, being too sensitive regarding the feelings of other people to let one word of her deep discontent show itself as yet.
The door was flung open as the horses drew up with a flourish before the house, and Mrs. Ellis appeared on the threshold, her arms stretched out in eager welcome.
“Oh, Bertha, little Bertha, can it really be you! My dear, my dear, it is almost too good to be true!” she cried, and there was so much of downright breakdown in the voice of Grace, that Bertha caught her breath sharply, and at the same moment looked anxiously round, hoping that Tom Ellis did not hear.