Hawtrey remembered that Agatha did not like tobacco smoke, and had always been inclined to exact a certain conventional deference which he had grown to regard as rather out of place upon the prairie.
"That's a very long way off," he objected.
Sally showed no sign of conceding the point as he had expected, and he took out his pipe. He wanted to think, for once more instincts deep down in him stirred in faint protest against what he almost meant to do. There were also several points that required practical consideration, and among them were his financial difficulties, though these did not trouble him so much as they had done a few months earlier. For a minute or two neither of them said anything, and then Sally spoke again.
"You're worrying about something, Gregory?" she said.
Hawtrey admitted it. "Yes," he said, "I am. My place is a poor one, and when Wyllard comes home I shall have to go back to it again. Things would be so much easier for me just now if I had the Range."
The girl looked at him steadily with reproach in her eyes.
"Oh," she said, "your place is quite big enough if you'd only take hold and run it as it ought to be run. You could surely do it, Gregory, if you tried."
The man's resistance grew feebler, as it usually did when his prudence was at variance with his desires. Sally's words were in this case wholly guileless, as he recognised, and they stirred him. He said nothing, however, and she spoke again.
"Isn't it worth while, though there are things you would have to give up?" she said. "You couldn't go away and waste your dollars in Winnipeg every now and then."
Hawtrey laughed. "No," he admitted; "I suppose if I meant to make anything of the place that couldn't be done. Still, you see, it's horribly lonely sitting by oneself beside the stove in the long winter nights. I wouldn't want to go to Winnipeg if I had only somebody to keep me company."