"Come on out here, some of you," called Eddie jovially. "Heavens! The way you all hug the stove would make anyone believe you'd never seen a Canadian winter before in your lives. Here, Frank, lend a hand with these trunks and call Ben to take the horses. Gertie, this is Nora. Now you need never be lonely again."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Gertie primly.
The man called Frank, the one who had been honoring Nora with his regard, came forward with a hand outstretched to help her alight, while another man, the ordinary type of English laborer placed himself at the horses' heads.
"Come, hop out, Nora."
There was nothing else to do, Nora put the very tips of her fingers into the outstretched hand. To her unspeakable indignation, she felt herself lifted bodily out and actually carried inside the door. At her smothered exclamation, Gertie gave a shrill laugh.
CHAPTER VI
Three weeks had passed with inconceivable rapidity, leaving Nora with the dazed feeling that one has sometimes when waking from a fantastic dream.
There were moments when she was overwhelmed with the utter hopelessness of ever being able to adapt herself to a mode of life so foreign to all her traditions. She had, she told herself, been prepared to find everything different from life at home; and, while she had smiled—on that day such ages ago when young Hornby had called on her at Tunbridge Wells to announce his impending departure from the land of his birth—at his airy theory that the life of the Canadian farmer was largely occupied with riding, hunting, dancing and tennis, she found to her dismay that her own mental picture of her brother's existence had been nearly as far from the reality.
On the drive over from the station, Eddie had vaguely remarked that he had a great surprise for her when she reached the house. Nora had paid but little attention at the moment, thinking that he probably meant the house itself. What had been her astonishment—when once her rage at being lifted bodily from the sled by the man called Frank had permitted of her feeling any other emotion—to find Reginald Hornby himself an inmate of her brother's household. There was but little trace of the ultra smart young Londoner, beyond his still carefully kept hair and mustache. The only difference between his costume and that of the others was that his overalls were newer and that his flannel shirt was plainly a Piccadilly product.