Prescott knew this was correct, but he found his companion an interesting study. She was wrapped up in cold propriety; she must have led an uneventful life, looked up to and obeyed by the small community that owned her father’s rule. Romance could not have touched her; she was not imaginative; but he thought there were warmth and passion lying dormant somewhere in her nature. She could not have wholly escaped the consequences of being Cyril Jernyngham’s sister.
Nothing further was said for a while, and presently the team toiled through a belt of sandy ridges, furrowed by the wind, where the summits were crested here and there by small jack-pines. Looking up as they crossed one elevation, Gertrude noticed a wedge of small dark bodies outlined against the soft blue sky.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Wild geese; the forerunners of the host that will soon come down from the marshes by the Polar Sea.”
“But do they go so far?”
He laughed.
“They cross this continent twice a year; up from the steaming lagoons on the Gulf to the frozen muskegs of the North, and back again. They’re filled with a grand unrest and wholly free; travelers of the high air, always going somewhere.”
“Ah!” responded Gertrude. “To be always doing something is good. But the other—the ceaseless wandering——”
“Going on and on, beating a passage through the icy winds, rejoicing in the sun, seeking for adventure. Is there no charm in that?”
She looked at him uneasily, as if his words had awakened some half-understood response.