Arthur looked a very decided acceptance of the proposition, but Robert shook his head. 'Couldn't leave the place,' said he, smiling; 'too much to be done.'
'Nonsense; the trees will stand till your return, and you can't plough through four feet of snow.'
'If I was far enough advanced to have land fit for ploughing, nothing could be pleasanter than to join you, Argent; but unfortunately no end of trees have to be cut down, and logged in heaps for burning before then. But, Arthur, wouldn't you go?'
His faint opposition, because he did not like to leave his brother, was easily overcome. Captain Argent made another attack upon Robert's resolve. 'People always consider winter the time for amusement in Canada. Nature gives a tolerably good hint to the same effect, by blocking up the rivers so that ships can't sail, and snowing up the farms, so that the ground isn't seen for months; and if that isn't a licence for relaxation'—
'I suspect that in the earlier stages of bush-life there are no holidays,' replied Robert: 'if you just reflect that everything in the way of civilisation has to be done afresh from the beginning pretty much like living on a desert island. Now I've got a house to build by summer time, and here are all the preparations towards it as yet;' and he pointed to the shingles.
'Why, thin, I'd like to know for what Misther Robert is dhrawin' up the poverty of the family, an' makin' little of himself before the captain,' thought Andy angrily, and betraying the feeling by a bang of the frying-pan as he laid it aside. 'Can't he talk to him of sojers, or guns, or wild bastes, or somethin' ginteel of that kind, an' not be makin' a poor mouth, as if he hadn't a single hap'ny.' Andy was relieved when the conversation veered round to a consideration of Canada as military quarters.
'About the pleasantest going,' was the Hon. Captain Argent's opinion. 'Of course I can't exactly make out why we're sent here, unless to stave off the Yankees, which it seems to me the colonists are sufficiently inclined and sufficiently able to do themselves; neither can I imagine why Joe Hume and his school of economists submit to such expense without gaining anything in return, save the honour and glory of calling Canada our colony. But leaving that matter to wiser heads than mine, I can say for myself that I like the quarters greatly, and am inclined to agree with Canadian eulogists, that it is the finest country in the world—barring our own little islands.'
'I don't feel, though, as if it ever could be home,' observed Robert, who had taken to his shingles again.
'Perhaps not; but we military men have an essentially homeless profession, you know.'
'The red-coats in Montreal and Quebec seemed a visible link with mother country, most welcome to my eyes in the new land; and so, Argent, when you're commander-in-chief, do continue the regiments in Canada, for my sake.'