“I scarcely think you need have been jealous of him,” she said. “Larry wasn’t Miss Durand’s kind, and he couldn’t be lonely. Everybody was fond of him.”
Clavering nodded. “Of course! Still, Larry hasn’t quite so many friends lately.”
“Now,” said Hetty with a little flash in her eyes, “when you’ve told me that you have got to tell the rest. What has he been doing?”
“Ploughing!” said Clavering drily. “I did what I could to restrain him, but nobody ever could argue with Larry.”
Hetty laughed, though she felt a little dismay. It was then a serious affair to drive the wheat furrow in a cattle country, and the man who did it was apt to be regarded as an iconoclast. Nevertheless, she would not show that she recognized it.
“Well,” she said, “that isn’t very dreadful. The plough is supreme in the Dakotas and Minnesota now. Sooner or later it has got to find a place in our country.”
“Still, that’s not going to happen while your father lives.”
The girl realized the truth of this, but she shook her head. “We’re not here to talk wheat and cattle, and I see Flo Schuyler looking at us,” she said. “Go across and make yourself agreeable to the others for the honour of the prairie.”
Clavering went; but he had left an unpleasant impression behind him, as he had perhaps intended, while soon after he took his departure Flora Schuyler found her friend alone.
“So you sent Jake away!” she said.