The sailor's ambitions Grace admired with enthusiasm; his splendid future, his prospective flocks and herds, lands and homesteads beside the Champlain, attracted her less keenly. But more topics than one made the girl's eyes sparkle as he spoke of them.
"You are such a Diana that you'd love Vermont," Cecil once said. "Our folks, however, hunt for business rather than sport. We had moose, deer, bears, foxes and wolves once, and peltry was the great business of the trappers and pioneers. Even yet our furs fetch near two thousand pounds every year; but the beasts are being killed faster than Nature can restore them. They will soon vanish."
"We had wolves here, too. I think the last was killed in Tudor times. 'Twas an obligation under the old local laws that the folk should slay them. Now we have little but foxes; and a good, red Moor fox is the best in England."
"I never hunted, though I can ride sailor-fashion. Now I should like to see you in the saddle, Mistress Grace!"
"Of course you hunt in the English way, if you have respectable hound-fearing foxes?" she asked, ignoring his desire concerning herself.
"Yes; many amongst us stick stoutly to New England ways, which, indeed, are the same as old England ways for that matter. But in states of society such as ours, the conditions make for change. We are deeply interested in education and enterprise; we marry early; we advocate equality of rights, because that is natural where all men have the same interests. But equality of power we never pretend to. The idea is nonsensical; Nature herself shows that. Men are unequal in power and capacity—so are all other animals. We are, I think, both economical and hospitable. We resent control of religion, and hold liberty of thought in that matter vital. We have an elastic mind in affairs of government, and don't attempt to bind posterity to our forms in your English fashion. In England men are full of opinions and empty of information. We let opinions go hang and never tire of learning. We keep fluid; we respect human life very much. Instead of a hundred and sixty capital crimes, as there are in Great Britain, we have but nine sins in Vermont for which a man is punished by death. We marry early——"
"You said that before."
"Did I? Well—it's interesting."
"So it is."
"But I bore you to distraction—I am sure that I must do so, Miss Malherb."