Jameson, driving several days over an unfamiliar trail, stayed one night at a rancher’s house in which was a son of about eight years of age. After supper, the boy, who should have been in bed, devoted himself to observation of the stranger. While Jameson was smoking, the youngster planted himself between his knees, and watched him intently for some time. At last he broke silence.
“I can see you ain’t no American citizen,” he said.
“How do you know that? Are you sure?” Jameson asked.
“You bet I am. I can see you ain’t no American by the way you smoke.”
“That’s very interesting,” Jameson replied. “And how do you know I’m not an American citizen by my smoking?”
“You don’t spit.”
As an indication of what happens sometimes in a private car, it can be said that the little town of Vibank, between Brandon and Regina, is a memorial of a very agreeable couple of days with the Jamesons. It commemorates Violet Jameson, and the institution with which her father was closely associated. Nobody would suspect an Irish origin for Vibank; but it is as truly Hibernian as Pat Murphy himself.
Mr. Kindersley, since he first became concerned with the Canadian Northern has been knighted, for distinguished services during the war, and has succeeded Lord Strathcona as governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had charge of the issuing of war certificates—the scheme by which scores of millions of pounds were raised by the creation of certificates which, on payment of sixteen shillings and sixpence, guaranteed the recipient a sovereign after five years. As governor of “The Company,” Sir Robert toured Canada in 1920, in celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Charles the Second, who gave to Prince Rupert and his fellow gentlemen adventurers the territory draining into the Bay. It didn’t belong to Charles, but he had the ways of kings in those days, and gave it, exacting in return the tribute of two elk and two beaver, whenever he visited the domain.
Before the war Mr. Kindersley came several times to Canada as the representative of Lazard Brothers, the great financial firm of London, Paris and New York. That house under-wrote millions of dollars’ worth of Canadian Northern securities; and, therefore, was intimately concerned in the enterprise, as to investing in which their clients would be largely guided by their example.
Sir Robert Kindersley is one of those Englishmen whose eminent affability of manner might be taken by some of our neighbours for evidence of an extreme remoteness from business acumen. But a shrewder business man never crossed the Atlantic.