“That I will,” accepted Doctor Joe. “I was lonely at Break Cove alone, and I pulled over in the skiff for a chat, and to spend the night—and to have a look at Jamie’s eyes.”
It was always a treat to have Doctor Joe with them for a night. When he and Thomas lighted their pipes in the evening, and the big box stove was crackling cheerily, he thrilled them with stories of other and far-off lands. Thomas was no less interested than Margaret and the boys in his wonderful tales of the great outside world, and of the great city in which he had once lived—of the mighty buildings that towered high, high up into the skies—of the rushing railway trains—and their wonderful speed—of people so numerous that they crowded one another on the streets, and where you might meet thousands and thousands of people and never know one by name, and where half a hundred families might live in a single house.
“I’d like wonderful well t’ have a look at un,” said Thomas, “but I wouldn’t want t’ have t’ stay long in such a place. There wouldn’t be room t’ stretch.”
“No,” agreed Doctor Joe, “you wouldn’t care to stay there.”
“And how’s th’ huntin’?” asked David. “Seems like there wouldn’t be game enough for ’em all t’ hunt, and I’m wonderin’, now, how they gets their meat.”
Then Doctor Joe had to tell them about cattle and sheep, the great stock ranges and stock yards, and how the animals were butchered and the meat sold.
“I wouldn’t want t’ eat th’ meat of animals I raised up like that,” declared Margaret. “’Tis wonderful hard and cruel t’ tie un up like that and kill un. They don’t have a chance t’ get away, like th’ deer has here.”
“But there are plenty of people there,” said Doctor Joe, “who eat the meat every day without giving a thought to that, but who think it very cruel to hunt and kill deer and other wild animals.”
“But th’ deer and wild game has a chance t’ get away and save themselves,” insisted Margaret. “The poor cows and sheep don’t have a chance at all. There must be wonderful strange folk in th’ world t’ think ’tis wrong t’ hunt deer.”