“Well, a man couldn’t get the lonesomeness around him, anyhow.”
“You’ll get it, all right, just like I told you; no green hand with all his senses ever escaped it. Maybe you’ll have it light, though,” she added, hopefully, as if to hold him up for the ordeal.
“I hope so. But with you coming over to take lessons, and Dad Frazer talking morning, noon, and night, I’ll forget Egypt and its fleshpots, maybe.”
“Egypt? I thought you came from Jasper?”
“It’s only a saying, used in relation to the place you look back to with regret when you’re hungry.”
“I’m so ignorant I ought to be shot!” said Joan.
And Mackenzie sat silently fronting her, the dead fire between, a long time, thinking of the sparkle of her yearning eyes, smiling in his grim way to himself when there was no chance of being seen as he felt again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch its purity.
“There’s a difference between wisdom and learning,” he said at last, in low and thoughtful voice. “What’s it like over where Dad Frazer grazes his sheep?”
“Close to the range Swan Carlson and the Hall boys use, and you want to keep away from there.”