“To slack up is something fresh, but on the whole I think I’m entitled to take a quiet smoke. I’d sooner play the fiddle, but Wheeler is about, and to inform the camp I’m relaxing might be rash. In Canada you’re a strenuous lot.”
“I expect that is so,” Austin agreed. “Canada’s a hard country; one’s forced to hustle.”
“You like to hustle; you feel loafing’s wrong. One senses the Puritan vein, and I imagine your ancestors were the folks we shipped off to New England when they made us tired. The reformation had some drawbacks. It banished the joy of life.”
“I reckon the Puritans went and had some trouble to make their get-away,” Austin rejoined. “My folks, however, are Ontario Scots, good old-fashioned Presbyterians. You’re another stamp, and I like your sporting clothes. I expect you burned the other lot?”
“Not at all,” said Kit. “I gave Pete a dollar to boil the articles and they are in the trunk your baggage-handlers smashed. In the North of England we are not extravagant. Then, although my luck’s been pretty good, sometimes one’s luck turns.” He paused and gave Austin a friendly smile when he resumed: “I expect I owe my getting a soft job to your meddling, Bob.”
“Oh, shucks! Wheeler’s pretty keen, and he had spotted you; but I want to talk about another thing. Wheeler will be around for the week-end, and since all is pretty straight I expect he’d give us a holiday. I’m going to Fairmead, and Carrie wants to meet you. Will you come along?”
“If Wheeler agrees, I’ll be happy to go,” said Kit.
Wheeler was willing, and when the construction train went down the line Kit was on board. A battered car waited at a flag-station by a tank and carried them noisily across the plain. Summer and the boisterous winds and thunderstorms were gone. The afternoon was calm, and after his labors at the bridge Kit got a sense of brooding tranquillity. In the foreground the grass was gray and silver; in the distance all was misty blue. The sunshine touched the bluffs and ponds with subdued yellow light.
The plain rolled, and the trail went up rises and plunged into ravines. Sometimes it curved round fences, and when fresh wire blocked the way the driver swore.
“The blamed country’s filling up,” he said. “Not long since you could drive straight to the United States. Soon you’ll be forced to keep the road reserve.”