CHAPTER IX
GORDON SPEAKS HIS MIND
It was a nipping morning, and the clearing outside the ranch was flecked with patches of frozen snow, when Waynefleet sat shivering in a hide chair beside the stove. The broken viands upon the table in front of him suggested that he had just made a tolerable breakfast, but his pose was expressive of limp resignation, and one could have fancied from the look in his thin face that he was feeling very sorry for himself. Self-pity, in fact, was rather a habit of his, and, perhaps, because of it, he had usually very little pity to spare for anybody else. He looked up when, flushed and gasping, his daughter came in with two heavy pails of water. She shivered visibly.
“It would be a favour if you would shut that door as soon as you can,” said Waynefleet. “As I fancy I have mentioned, this cold goes right through me. It occurred to me that you might have come in a little earlier to see if I was getting my breakfast properly.”
Laura, who glanced at the table, thought that he had acquitted himself reasonably well, but she refrained from pointing out the fact, and, after shutting the door, crossed the room to her store-cupboard, and took out a can of fruit which she had set aside for another purpose. Waynefleet watched her open it and made a little sign of impatience.
“You are very clumsy this morning,” he said.
The girl’s hands were wet and stiff with cold, but she quietly laid another plate upon the table before she answered him.
“Charly is busy in the slashing, and I don’t want to take him away, but there are those logs in the wet patch 90 that ought to be hauled out now the ground is hard,” she said. “I suppose you don’t feel equal to doing it to-day?”
“No,” said Waynefleet with querulous incisiveness, “it is quite out of the question. Do I look like a man who could reasonably be expected to undertake anything of that kind just now?”