"I would like it better than anything."
Leland appeared thoughtful. "I would like to see you there. You could put on the bracelet I saw you with and the crescent in your hair."
"No," said Carrie, who looked away from him, "I think I would sooner go very plainly—that is, if I could go at all."
The trace of eagerness in her voice was not lost upon the man, and he stood silent a moment before he made a little resolute gesture.
"Well," he said, "we'll go. It's the first little pleasure of that kind I have been able to offer you, and I daresay Gallwey will see the guards ploughed just as well as I could."
"There is some reason why you shouldn't go, after all?" and Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You are too busy."
"I'm not quite sure there is. I expect it's mostly fancy, but a man gets into the way of thinking that when there's anything of consequence to be done he should see it done himself. Now those fire-guards"—and he pointed to a belt of furrows that cut off the homestead from the prairie—"are the regulation width, but I was thinking of doubling them. The grass is tinder-dry, and the oats will soon be ripe enough to burn."
"Ah," said Carrie, "you think the rustlers might try again?"
Leland smiled drily. "Well," he said, "grass-fires are in no way unusual at this season."
Carrie guessed what he was thinking as he looked in silence out across the ripening wheat. As she gazed at the vast sweep of grain, she, too, was stirred with the pride of possession and accomplishment. She longed now for the glitter of the assembly, for conversation as one of them with men and women of culture and station, with a fervour which in all probability any one who had lived, as she had, on the lonely prairie levels would quite understand. But, with a little sigh, she crushed the longing down.