She glanced round. It was late in the afternoon and somewhat cooler than it had been. Half the plain lay in shadow, but the light was curiously sharp. A clump of ragged jack-pines stood on a sandhill miles away, and a lake twinkled in the remote distance. The powerful Clydesdale horses plodded through short crackling scrub; a fine scent of wild peppermint floated about.
“Oh,” she responded, “it’s delightful! And everybody’s so energetic! You move with a spring and verve; and I don’t hear any grumbling, though there seems to be so much to do!”
“And to bear now and then: crops wiped out—I’ve lost two of them. The work never slackens, except in winter, when you sit shivering beside the stove, if you’re not hauling in building logs or cordwood through the arctic frost. At night it’s deadly silent, unless there’s a blizzard howling; the plains are very lonely when the snow lies deep. Don’t you think you’re better off in England, taking it all ’round?”
He laid respectful fingers on the hem of her skirt, touching the fine material, as if appraising its worth.
“Our wheat-growers’ wives and daughters are lucky if they’ve a couple of moderately smart dresses, but I suppose you have several trunks full of things like this. That and the kind of life it implies must count for something.”
“I believe I have,” said Muriel with candor, answering his steady inquiring glance. “Still, I’ve felt that we drift along from amusement to amusement in a purposeless way, doing nothing that’s worth while. There might come a time when one would grow very tired of it.”
“It must come and bring trouble then. Here one goes on from task to task, each one bigger and more venturesome than the last; acre added to acre, a gasoline tractor to the horse-plow, another quarter-section broken. Mind and body taxed all day and often half the night. One can’t sit down and mope.”
This was, she thought, a curious speech for a man who had been described as careless, extravagant, and dissolute; but he was getting too serious, and she laughed.
“You were energetic enough in England, if reports are true. I’ve often thought of your right-of-way adventure. It must have been very dramatic when you appeared at the garden party covered with fresh tar.”
“Sounds like that, doesn’t it?” he cautiously agreed. “How do they tell the tale?”