Hawtrey admitted it. “Yes,” he replied, “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 recognized, and they stirred him. He made no comment, however, and she spoke again.
“Isn’t it worth while, though there are things you would have to give up?” she asked. “You couldn’t go away and waste your money 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.”
He turned towards her suddenly with decision in his face, and Sally lowered her eyes.
“Don’t you think you could get anybody if you tried?” she inquired.
“The trouble,” said Hawtrey gravely, “is that I have so little to offer. It’s a poor place, and I’m almost afraid, Sally, that I’m rather a poor farmer. As you have once or twice pointed out, I don’t stay with things. Still, it might be different if there was any particular reason why I should.”
He rose, and crossing the room, stood close beside her chair. “Sally,” he added, “would you be afraid to take hold and see what you could make of the place and me? Perhaps you could make something, though it would probably be very hard work, my dear.”