She paused while she sat down, and then once more she smiled up at him.
"Well," she continued, "I'll probably embarrass you if I go on in this strain—you seem to get uneasy when you venture ever so little out of your shell. For a change, you can read me the paper you brought from the settlement, and I won't grumble if it's about the markets and the price of wheat."
Hunter took up the paper. He was, where his deeper feelings were concerned, a singularly reticent man, which was, perhaps, an excuse for Florence and one explanation of the coldness that had grown up between them. Now he felt that there was to be a change, and because the prospect brought him a fervent satisfaction he refrained from speaking of it. He had, however, scarcely opened the paper when he started.
"Here's a piece of striking news!" he exclaimed. "Brand, of Winnipeg, has gone down—a disastrous smash. The fall in wheat has broken him. It appears that his liabilities are enormous, and there's practically nothing to meet them with."
He laid down the paper.
"I wonder," he added, "if Nevis could have heard of it before he left the settlement—though I think he must have done so, for the mail was already in. Anyway, when I was getting your team Bill told me that the man had driven off a few minutes earlier as fast as he could go."
"But how could the failure in Winnipeg affect Nevis?"
"Brand has been backing him, finding him the money to carry on his business, and now that he has gone under it may pull him down. The creditors will at once try to call in all outstanding loans, and I expect Nevis has his money so scattered that he can't immediately get hold of it. It's possible that the failure may drive him out of this part of the country."
They talked over the matter at some length, and the man was slightly astonished at the acumen his wife displayed. When at last he rose, it was with a deep content. He felt that a vista of happier days was opening up before them both.
On the following Monday he drove over to the Farquhar homestead, where Thorne was already waiting to hear what the lawyer had to tell. The latter, however, did not arrive until the evening, and Farquhar took him into the general-room where the others were sitting.