The man smiled. “Ah!” he said, “I was referring to the company.”
He had expressed himself in a similar fashion once or twice before, but Violet did not resent it. She admitted that she rather liked him, and she did not know that, although he had been a week or two at Bonavista, he had only intended to stay there a few days. It had naturally occurred to Mrs. Acton that there might be a certain significance in this, but she was misled by the open manner in which another young woman had annexed him.
There were other guests in the room, and among them was a little bald-headed man, whom Violet had heard had philanthropic tendencies, and was connected with some emigration scheme. This man was talking to Acton. He spoke in a didactic manner, tapping one hand with his gold-rimmed spectacles, and appeared quite content that the rest should hear him.
“There is no doubt that this country offers us a great field,” he said. “In fact, I have already made arrangements for settling a number of deserving families 253 on the land. What I am particularly pleased with is the manner in which the man who makes his home here is brought into close contact with Nature. The effect of this cannot fail to be what one might term recuperative. There is a vitality to be drawn from the soil, and I have of late been urging the manifold advantages of the simple life upon those who are interesting themselves in these subjects with me.”
Violet glanced at her companion, and saw the amusement in his eyes.
“Do you all talk like that in England?” she inquired.
The man raised his hand reproachfully. “I’m afraid some of us talk a good deal of rubbish now and then. Still, as a matter of fact, we don’t round up our sentences in that precise fashion, as he does. Just now we’re rather fragmentary. Of course, he’s right to some extent. I’m fond of the simple life––that is, for a month or so, when I know that a two days’ ride will land me in a civilized hotel. The trouble is that most of the folks who recommend it would certainly go all to bits in a few weeks after they tried it personally. Can you fancy our friend yonder chopping tremendous trees, or walking up to his knees in snow twelve hours with a flour-bag on his back?”
Violet certainly could not. The man was full-fleshed, plethoric, and heavy of foot, and he spoke with a throaty gasp.
“The tilling of the soil,” he went on, apparently addressing anybody who cared to listen, “is man’s natural task, and I think Nature’s beneficent influences are felt to their fullest extent in the primeval stillness of these wonderful Western woods.”
Violet’s companion looked up at her with a smile.