"No, but I want to be happy."
"Well," said Gertie sharply, "you've got a roof over your head and a comfortable bed to sleep in, three good meals a day and plenty to do. That's all anybody wants to make them happy, I guess."
"Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Reggie from his corner.
"Well," said Gertie, turning sharply on him, "if you don't like Canada, why did you come out?"
"You don't suppose," said Hornby, rising slowly to his feet, "I'd have let them send me if I'd have known what I was in for, do you? Not much. Up at five in the morning and working about the place like a navvy till your back feels as if it 'ud break, and then back again in the afternoon. And the same thing day after day. What was the good of sending me to Harrow and Oxford if that's what I've got to do all my life?"
There was a tragic dignity in his tone which for the moment held even Gertie silent. It was her husband who answered him, and Gertie's jealous ear detected a certain wistfulness in his voice.
"You'll get used to it soon enough, Reg. It is a bit hard at first, I'll admit. But when you get your foot in, you wouldn't change it for any other life."
"This isn't a country for a man to go to sleep in and wait for something to turn up," said Gertie aggressively.
"I wouldn't go back to England now, not for nothing," said Trotter, stung to an unusual burst of eloquence. "England! Eighteen bob a week, that's what I earned. And no prospects. Out of work five months in the year."
"What did you do in England!" asked Nora curiously.