“Well, I shall laugh at you and criticise you, and when you shut yourself up like an oyster I shall worm things out of you somehow, so be prepared,” said Grace, and she had been true to her word.
Mr. Ellis had looked at the diamonds which were in the case, and he had declared them to be very valuable indeed. “There is no mistaking them, and they are worth many thousands of dollars. I wish you had not got them, Bertha; it is horrid to think of your being bothered with valuable stuff like that.”
“Put them into the bank,” suggested Grace.
But Bertha shook her head. “I don’t think I will,” she said slowly. “It would only cause comment and speculation, perhaps; for how could a girl as poor as I am become possessed of diamonds like these in an ordinary way? Besides, I may some day encounter the man to whom they belong, and then I can restore them without any fuss, don’t you see? If no one knows that I have them, there is no danger of their being stolen.”
“The house might burn down,” suggested Grace.
“That would not matter at all so far as the diamonds are concerned, for I keep them in my tin trunk, and there is little danger of a diamond robbery right out in the heart of the prairie,” said Bertha; and then she carried the little morocco case back to her room and put it, with the coat, in the bottom of the tin trunk, after which they sat and talked of Tom’s old uncle, the Welshman, who had brought him up, then quarrelled with him, and cast him off in his young manhood just when most he needed a friend to help him.
“But I have got on in spite of being left to my own devices,” said Tom, with pardonable pride in his own achievements, and then he went on more soberly. “But it upsets me to think that the old man would persist in believing that I wanted his money. I was a great deal more keen on having someone to care for. Perhaps I ought to have been more patient with him. But when he was always flinging it at me that I was hanging round for the chance of what I could get out of him, it riled me so badly that I just cleared out and came west.”
“How hard it must have been for you!” murmured Bertha, who already knew Tom Ellis well enough to understand that his loneliness must have been frightful.
“It was about as rough as I cared for,” he answered. “When I got off the cars at Winnipeg I had only half a dollar left, so I had to go to work sharp, and not stand too fine as to what sort of job I got. I did anything I could get for two years, and then, as I had saved a little money, I pre-empted on a quarter section of land out here, lived on it for six months in each year to fulfil requirements, and the other six months I went east and earned enough to keep me going.”
“And that is where Grace came in, I suppose?” There was keen interest in Bertha’s tone. She was remembering that Anne and Hilda had always maintained that Grace had married beneath her, but surely a man who could carve his way through difficulties like these was well worth caring for. It was far more to his credit that he had carved his own way, than if he had still hung on with his uncle, bearing all sorts of abuse meekly for the sake of the gain which might come to him later.