“For one thing, because we want to keep you.” Mrs. Hastings looked at her with a very friendly smile. “Are you very anxious to make it up with Gregory?” A shiver ran through the girl. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I can’t answer you that! I must do what is right!”
To her astonishment, Mrs. Hastings drew her a little nearer, stooped and kissed her.
“Most of us, I believe, have that wish, but the thing is often horribly complex,” she said. “Anyway, you must put Gregory off again, if it’s only for another month or two. I fancy you will not find it difficult.”
She turned away, thus ending the conversation, but her manner had been so significant that Agatha, who did not sleep well that night, decided, if it was possible, to act on the well-meant advice.
It happened that a little dapper man who was largely interested in the land agency and general mortgage business spent that evening with Hawtrey in Wyllard’s room at the Range. He had driven around by Hawtrey’s homestead earlier in the afternoon, and had deduced a good deal from the state of it, though this was a point he kept to himself. Now he lay on a lounge chair beside the stove smoking one of Wyllard’s cigars and unobtrusively watching his companion. There was a roll of bills in his pocket with which Gregory had very reluctantly parted.
“In view of the fall in wheat it must have been rather a pull for you to pay me that interest,” he remarked.
“It certainly was,” Hawtrey admitted with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry it had to be done.”
“I don’t quite see how you made it,” persisted the other man. “What you got for your wheat couldn’t have done much more than cover working expenses.”
Hawtrey laughed. He was quite aware that his visitor’s profession was not one that was regarded with any great favor by the prairie farmers, but he was never particularly cautious, and he rather liked the man.
“As a matter of fact, it didn’t, Edmonds,” he confessed. “You see, I practically paid you out of what I get for running this place. The red wheat Wyllard raises generally commands a cent or two a bushel more from the big milling people than anything put on the market round here.”