"You believe it's safer, for example, to haul stovewood home through the Canadian frost or drive a plow under the scorching sun?"
"Yes; I think I feel something of the kind."
Flora somewhat astonished him by her scornful laugh.
"You're wise," she said. "We have had sportsmen here from your country, and I've a vivid memory of one or two. One could see by their coarse faces that they ate and drank too much; and they seemed determined to avoid discomfort at any cost. I suppose they could shoot, but they could neither strip a gun nor carry it on a long day's march. The last party thought it needful to take a teamload of supplies when they went north after moose. It would have been a catastrophe if they had missed their dinner."
"Going without one's dinner has its inconveniences," said George.
"And thinking too much about it has its perils," she retorted.
George nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with it. He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to which they had confined their efforts. Some had become mere club loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence. This had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful, and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.
"Well," he said, "nobody could call this a good country for the pampered loafer."
Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie. In the foreground it was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline. It was almost beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a sense of vastness and solitude. The effect was somehow daunting. One thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.
"I've heard it called hard," she said. "It undoubtedly needs hard men; there is nothing here that can be easily won. That's a fact that the people you're sending over ought to recognize."