“It is,” asserted Mrs. Hastings with a laugh. “You see, he’s highly eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he’s apparently invulnerable. I believe,” she added dryly, “that’s the right word, too.”
The Swedish housekeeper appeared again and they talked with her until she went to bring in the six o’clock supper. Soon after the table was laid Wyllard and the men came in. Wyllard was attired as when Agatha had last seen him, except that he had put on a coat. He led his guests to the head of the long table, but the men—there were a number of them—sat below, and evidently had no diffidence about addressing question or comment to their employer.
The men ate with a voracious haste, but that appeared to be the custom of the country, and Agatha could find no great fault with their manners or conversation. The talk was, for the most part, quaintly witty, and some of the men used what struck her as remarkably fitting and original similes. Indeed, as the meal proceeded, she became curiously interested.
The windows were open wide, and a sweet, warm air swept into the barely furnished room. The spaciousness of the room impressed her, and she was pleased with the evident unity of these brown-faced, strong-armed toilers with their leader. At the head of the table he sat, self-contained, but courteous and responsive to all alike, and though they were in an essentially democratic country, she felt that there was something almost feudal in the relations between him and his men. She could not imagine them to be confined to the mere exaction of so much labor and the expectation of payment of wages due. She was pleased that he had not changed his clothing.
So strong was Agatha’s interest that she was surprised when the meal was finished. Afterward, she and Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper for a while, and an hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he should show her the slough beyond the bluff.
“It’s the nearest approach to a lake we have until you get to the alkali tract,” he said.
Agatha went with him through the shadow of the wood, and when they came out among the trees he found her a seat upon a fallen birch. The house and plowing were hidden now, and they were alone on the slope to a slight hollow, in which half a mile of gleaming water lay. Its surface was broken here and there by tussocks of grass and reeds, and beyond it the prairie ran back unbroken, a dim gray waste, to the horizon. The sun had dipped behind the bluff, and the sky had become a vast green transparency. There was no wind now, but a wonderful exhilarating freshness crept into the cooling air, and the stillness was broken only by the clamor of startled wildfowl which Agatha could see paddling in clusters about the gleaming slough.
“Those are ducks—wild ones?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Wyllard; “ducks of various kinds. Most of them the same as your English ones.”
“Do you shoot them?”