“I’m afraid I haven’t,” admitted Weston, with a little laugh. “After all, when one has seen how some of these mining syndicates and mortgage companies get in their work, a certain prejudice against such things isn’t quite unnatural.”
“Ah,” said Ida, who had now decided that the conversation must be kept within safe limits, “you don’t, however, mind using the shovel.”
Weston was quite ready to follow the lead she had given him.
“What are we to do when we come out here?” he asked, with an air of whimsical reflection. “Half of us have no professions, and we haven’t a trade. They bring us up to take life easily, and then, when some accident pitches us out into the Colonies, it’s rather a shock to discover that nobody seems to have any use for us. As a matter of fact, I don’t blame your sawmill bosses, your railroad men and your ranchers, considering that it takes several years to learn how to chop a tree, and that to keep pace with an average construction gang is a liberal education.”
Ida laughed. The further they got away from the crisis now the better she would be pleased.
“I fancy there’s still a notion in the old country that the well-brought-up young Englishman excels at anything he cares to undertake, even if it’s only manual labor,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” laughed Weston, “I’ve heard it. Let them keep such notions over yonder if it pleases them. One naturally likes to think we’re as good as the rest, and perhaps we’re warranted, but it seems to me that the man of equal muscle raised to swing the ax and shovel is going to beat the one who’s new to it every time.”
“But the pride of caste!” said Ida. “Doesn’t that count? Doesn’t success even at such things as track-laying or chopping trees depend on moral as well as physical strength?”
“I think with most of us courage is largely a matter of experience,” said Weston. “We learn to know what can’t hurt us and to avoid the things that can. As to the other kind, the man who hazards his life and limbs in half-propped wild-cat adits, or running logs down the rapids, is hardly likely to be less cool in a tight place than the one who has never been accustomed to anything of the kind.”
He was evidently expatiating on this subject merely because he felt that it was safe ground, but Ida, who partly agreed with what he said, felt that, after all, there was probably something in the insular English notion that he was too proud to uphold. This man, at least, possessed a courage that made him willing to carry the fight into the market-place with wholly unaccustomed weapons, and a pride that impelled him to lay a stern restraint upon his passion. She fancied that there were men in Canada who would not have been deterred by her money had they wished to marry her, and, for that matter, one or two in England had delicately permitted the fact to become apparent. In the meanwhile she had decided that he should have his wish. It would perhaps be possible to offer support in some shape later on, if it became apparent that he was badly beaten.