Hawtrey was thinking of Sally then, and the question irritated him.
"I don't know that it concerns you, but in a general way it's probable," he said.
"Well," said the storekeeper good-humouredly, "a pair of these mittens would make quite a nice present for a lady. Smartest thing of the kind I've ever seen here; choicest Alaska fur."
Hawtrey bought a pair, and the storekeeper took a fur cap out of another box.
"Now," he said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it."
Hawtrey bought the cap, and smiled as he swung himself up into his waggon. Gloves are not much use in the prairie frost, and mittens, which are not divided into finger-stalls, will within limits fit almost anybody. This, he felt, was fortunate, for he was not quite sure that he meant to give them to Agatha.
It was bitterly cold, and the pace the team made was slow, for the snow was loose and too thin for a sled of any kind, which, after all, is not very generally used upon the prairie. As the result of this, night had closed down and Hawtrey was frozen almost stiff when at last a birch bluff rose out of the waste in front of him. It cut black against the cold blueness of the sky and the spectral gleam of snow, but when he had driven a little further a stream of ruddy orange light appeared in the midst of it. A few minutes later he pulled his team up in front of a little log-built house, and getting down with difficulty saw the door open as he approached it. Sally stood in the entrance silhouetted against a blaze of cheerful light.
"Oh!" she said. "Gregory!"
Hawtrey recognised the thrill in her voice, and took both her hands, as he had once been in the habit of doing.
"Will you let me in?" he asked.