“Well, then, why don’t you come?” I asked; and the big man hesitated still, inspecting his boots, until, facing round toward me, he said: “I’ve been figuring it mightn’t be good for me. I’m a plain man with a liking for straight talk, Ralph—so are you—and it might make things easier if I were to tell you. It’s Miss Aline that scared me.”
I burst out laughing, but Jasper did not join; then I waited somewhat astonished until he continued: “She’s the flower of this prairie, and she’s got a mighty cute head of her own. I never could stand them foolish women. So I came, and I would have come every day, until Harry chipped in, and that set me thinking. I said, ‘You stop there and consider, Jasper, before it’s too late, and you’re done for.’”
I frowned at this, but Jasper added: “You don’t get hold exactly—what I meant was this: I’m a big rough farmer, knowing the ways of wheat and the prairie, and knowing nothing else. She’s wise, and good, and pretty, way up as high as the blue heaven above me. Even if she’d 341 take me—which, being wise, she wouldn’t—the deal wouldn’t be fair to her. No; it couldn’t anyway be fair to her. Then I saw Harry with his clever talk and pretty ways, and I said, ‘That’s the kind of man that must mate with her. Go home to your plowing, Jasper, before it becomes harder, and you make a most interesting fool of yourself.’ So I went home, and I’m going to stop there, Ralph Lorimer, until the right man comes along. Then—well, I’ll wish Miss Aline the happiness I could never have given her.”
“You are a very good fellow, Jasper,” I said, and pitied my old friend as he departed ruefully. He had acted generously, and though I hardly fancy Aline would have accepted him, in any case, I knew that she might have chosen worse. There are qualities which count for more than the graces of polish and education, especially in new lands, but Harry possessed these equally, and, as Jasper had said, Aline and he had much more in common. Then it also occurred to me that there was some excuse for Colonel Carrington. The cases were almost parallel, and to use my friend’s simile Grace Carrington was also as high as the blue heavens above her accepted lover. Still, if I had not the Ontario man’s power of self-abnegation, and had forgotten what was due to her, she had said with her own lips that she could be happy with me, and I blessed her for it.
What transpired at Lone Hollow also provided food for thought. Lyle and several of the supporters of the creamery scheme awaited me there.
“We have practically decided to accept your estimates,” Lyle said, “but it seems advisable to make one or two alterations, and we want you to ride over with us to Green Mountain to-morrow and make a survey of a fresh site that one of the others seems to think favorable. After we decide on a place for the buildings, and a few other details, we’ll 342 ask you to attend a meeting which we expect to hold at the Manor. The matter will have to be discussed with Colonel Carrington.”
“Then I should sooner you excuse me. I’m afraid that my presence might prejudice the Colonel,” I replied, and several of the others laughed.
“He’s prejudiced already,” said one. “Still, we are growing rather tired of the Colonel’s opposition to whatever he does not suggest himself, and we mean to build the creamery. You will have to face your share of the unpleasantness with the rest of us.”
I almost regretted that I had furnished the estimates, but it was too late and I could not very well draw back now; so, promising to attend, I returned to Fairmead in a thoughtful mood. Aline bantered me about my absent-mindedness, and desired to learn the cause of it, but as Harry was there and it partly concerned Jasper’s explanation I did not enlighten her. Strange to say, I had never pictured Harry as a suitor for my sister, but now I could see only advantages in the union for both of them, and, what was perhaps as much to the purpose, advantages for me. I expected to bring Grace to Fairmead sooner or later, and she and Aline were, I felt, too much alike in one or two respects to agree.
On the following day I rode over to Green Mountain with Lyle and three or four of his friends. We had a measuring chain with us as well as one or two instruments that I had learned how to use when railroad building, and it was afternoon when we got to work plotting out the alternative site for the creamery that one of the others had considered more favorable on account of its convenience to running water. The term Mountain is used somewhat vaguely on the prairie, and Green Mountain could scarcely be called a hill. It was a plateau of no great height dotted with 343 a dense growth of birches and seamed by ravines out of one of which a creek that would supply the creamery with power came swirling.