"Your father would never force you to marry a man you do not care for," Mrs. Mowbray assured her. "So far as that goes, you have nothing to fear."
"What do you mean?" Beatrice asked in alarm.
Her mother's eyes were anxious, and there was a warning in the look she gave the girl.
"My dear, you would not find him compliant if you wished to marry a man he did not approve of."
Beatrice stooped to flick an imaginary piece of lint off of her skirt. She did not want her mother to see her face just then.
"After all," she answered, far more confidently than she felt, "that may never happen."
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAITOR
The prairie was bright with sunshine, and the boisterous west wind was cut off by a bluff where Harding sat amid a litter of dismantled machinery. Behind him the newly opened birch leaves showed specks of glowing green, and a jack-rabbit, which had put off its winter coat and was now dappled white and gray, fed quietly, with a watchful eye turned toward the unconscious man; in front, the vast sweep of grass that flashed with a silvery gleam as it bowed to the wind was broken by the warm chocolate hue of a broad strip of plowing. The rows of clods, with their polished faces, stretched across the foreground; and on their outer edge Devine, dressed in overalls the color of the soil, drove a team of big, red oxen.
Harding, however, was absorbed in the study of several brass rings and coils of packing that had formed the gland of a pump. Near by stood a giant plow with a row of shares, looking out of place among the earth and grass with its glaring paint, its ugly boiler, and its sooty stack, though the work that it had done was obvious. Something had gone wrong, and Harding was trying to locate the trouble. The delay was embarrassing, for he had a wide stretch of land to break, and the loss of even an hour was serious. There was not a trained mechanic in the neighborhood; and if the plow were likely to give him trouble, the sooner he learned to master it the better. Every part of the machine seemed to be perfect; yet the steam had gone down on the previous evening, and he must find out the reason. It was exasperating work.