“I certainly did. There, however, didn’t seem to be many dollars left over when I’d faced the bills.”
The girl made a little gesture of impatience. “Oh, Bob and Jake and Jasper sowed on less backsetting,” she said, “and they’re buying new teams and plows. Can’t you do what they do, though I guess they don’t go off for weeks to Winnipeg?”
The man was silent. He had an incentive for hard work about which she was ignorant, and he had certainly done much, but the long, iron winter, when there was nothing that could be done, had proved too severe a test for him. It was very dreary sitting alone evening after evening beside the stove, and the company of the somnolent Sproatly was not cheerful. Now and then his pleasure-loving nature had revolted from the barrenness of his lot when, stiff and cold, he drove home from an odd visit to a neighbor, and arriving in the dark found the stove had burned out and water had frozen hard inside the house. These were things his neighbors patiently endured, but Hawtrey had fled for life and brightness to Winnipeg.
Sally glanced up at him with a little nod. “You take hold with a good grip. Everybody allows that,” she observed. “The trouble is you let things go afterwards. You don’t stay with it.”
“Yes,” assented Hawtrey. “I believe you have hit it, Sally. That’s very much what’s the matter with me.”
“Then,” said the girl with quiet insistence, “won’t you try?”
A faint flush crept into Hawtrey’s face. Sally was less than half-taught, and unacquainted with anything beyond the simple, strenuous life of the prairie. Her greatest accomplishments consisted of some skill in bakery and the handling of half-broken teams; but she had once or twice given him what he recognized as excellent advice. There was something incongruous in the situation, but, as usual, he preferred to regard it whimsically.
“I suppose I’ll have to, if you insist. If ever I’m the grasping owner of the biggest farm in this district I’ll blame you,” he answered.
Sally said nothing further on that subject, and some time later the sleigh went skimming down among the birches in a shallow ravine. Hawtrey pulled the horses up when they reached the bottom of the ravine, and glanced up at a shapeless cluster of buildings that showed black amid the trees.
“Lorton won’t be back until to-morrow, but I promised to pitch the bags into his granary,” he said. “If I hump them up the trail here it will save us driving round through the bluff.”