Agatha laughed. “Well,” she said, “I was once, to a certain extent, accustomed to something similar; though, after all, one could hardly compare the Grange with Garside Scar. Still, that was some time ago, and I have earned my living for several years now. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
She glanced down at her dress. “For instance, this is the result of a great deal of self-denial, though the cost of it was partly worked off in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I sang at concerts—and it was part of my stock in trade. After all, why should you think me capable only of living in luxury?”
“I didn’t go quite that far.”
She laughed again. “Then is Canada such a very dreadful place? I have heard of other Englishwomen going out there as farmers’ wives. Do they all live unhappily?”
“No,” replied Wyllard, “at least, they show no sign of it, and some of them and the city-born Canadians are, I think, the salt of this earth. Probably it’s easy to be calm and gracious in such a place as this—though naturally I don’t know since I’ve never tried it—but when a woman who toils from sunrise to sunset most of the year keeps her sweetness and serenity, it’s a very different and much finer thing. But I’ll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn’t dreadful; it’s a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold—and we have them both—don’t worry one there. There’s optimism in the crystal air. It’s not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It is vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you pass the breaking, it’s primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow. It’s wonderful after sunset in the early spring, when the little cold wind is like wine, and it runs white to the horizon with the smoky red on the rim of it melting into transcendental green. When the wheat rolls across the foreground in ocher and burnished copper waves, it is more wonderful still. One sees the fulfillment of the promise, and takes courage.”
“Then,” asked Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of such appreciation of nature, “what is there to shrink from?”
“In the case of a small farmer’s wife, the constant, never-slackening strain. There’s no hired assistance. She must clean the house, and wash, and cook, though it’s not unusual for the men to wash the plates.”
The girl evidently was not much impressed, for she laughed.
“Does Gregory wash the plates?” she asked.
Wyllard’s eyes twinkled. “When Sproatly won’t,” he said. “Still, in a general way they do it only once a week.”