"Have you ever been home since you were married?" asked Carrie.
"Once," said Mrs. Custer, with a faint shadow in her face. "I never went again. The others were not the same, or perhaps I had changed, for they did not seem to understand me. My younger sisters were growing up, and they thought only of dances, sleigh-rides and nights on the toboggan-slides, as I suppose I did once. My dresses looked dowdy beside theirs, too, and they told me I was getting too serious. I felt myself a stranger in the house where I was born. One, it seems, loses touch so soon."
Again she stopped and laughed. "One night something was said that hurt me, and I think I lay awake and cried for hours as I realised that I could never quite bridge the gulf that had opened up between the rest and me. Then I remembered that Tom, who had worked harder than ever to raise the wheat that sent me there, wanted me always—and I went back to him."
Her voice fell a little, and Carrie was touched by the faint thrill in it. She had seen Thomas Custer, a plain, somewhat hard-featured and silent man, and yet this woman, who she fancied had once been almost beautiful, had willingly worn out her freshness in coarse labour for him. Then a tiny flush crept into her face as she remembered that she, too, had a husband, one who gave her everything, and for whom she seldom had even a smile. She was not innately selfish. Indeed, she had shown herself capable of sacrifice. As she sat unobserved in the growing shadow, she sighed. She wondered whether they still remembered her at Barrock-holme, for, if they did, they had seldom written, and she reflected sadly that she had not Mrs. Custer's consolation, since there was nobody else who wanted her.
"You really believe this is going to be a lean year?" she said.
"I am afraid so. Still, it is scarcely likely to trouble you, except that your husband will have a good deal to face. Tom isn't sure he was wise in sowing so much, with wheat going down, and it seems he considered it necessary to quarrel with the rustlers, too. They are rather vindictive people, and it's a little astonishing they have left him alone, though Tom thinks they or their friends had something to do with what happened to his waggon. He met him driving home the day he was thrown out, and told me that Charley, who had evidently had a bad fall, looked very shaky."
Carrie started. "He was thrown out of his waggon?"
"Of course! Didn't he tell you? Well, perhaps he would be afraid of its worrying you. It would be like Charley Leland, and here I have been giving him away."
Carrie was troubled by an unpleasant sense of confusion as she remembered that her husband had really told her, and what her attitude had been; but Mrs. Custer had more to say.
"Charley Leland is going to have his hands full this year. The fall in wheat is bad enough, and it is quite likely the rustlers will make trouble for him. Then he must fall out with a man at the settlement, who Tom says is in league with them. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that, though I almost think it was the only thing he could do."