"A brave heart like yours carries one a long way, but training and experience are needed. Grit alone is not much use when you're up against a thing you don't know how to do."
"It helps you to learn. Am I so very stupid? Don't you see, dear, that I want to prove that I can be useful?"
"To carry heavy pails, bake, and mend old overalls? That would be an unthinkable waste of fine material. It's your business to be your beautiful and gracious self, a refining influence, a light in the home!"
Beatrice laughed.
"I'm afraid when you think about me you lose your usual sense. I should be as useful if I were made of painted wax, and you'd get tired of your goddess some day and want to break me up. I'm alive, you know. I want to be in the midst of the strife. I hear the bugles call."
Harding kissed her tenderly.
"I'm afraid we'll have to fall in with the firing line, but it will be my business to shield you from harm," he said.
"It's a good fight," she answered with sparkling eyes; "you have taught me that. The flag goes steadily forward with the pioneers in the van. There are great alkali barrens, rocks, and muskegs to be overcome, arid plains to be watered, forests cleared, the waste places to be made fruitful. That's why we have painted the Beaver of Industry in the field. But we have our camp-followers—and I might have been one—useless idlers, grafters, and dishonest contractors who rob the fighting men."
"When we've broken the wilderness, we'll have time to deal with them; but I'm afraid many a pioneer will go down before we march much farther."
"Ah!" said Beatrice softly. "But whether the fight is hard or not, you must teach me to do my part."