“Yes,” she said; “I love it very well. Perhaps I am prejudiced, and I’ve only had a glimpse at other countries, but I feel that this is the most beautiful land in the world.”
He stopped and glanced round. From where they stood he could look out upon leagues of lonely brown moors running back into the distance under a cloudless sky. Beyond them the Scottish hills were softly penciled in delicate gray. There was a sense of space and vastness in the picture, but it was not that which spoke most plainly to him. Down on the far-spread low ground lay such white homesteads, built to stand for generations, as he had never seen in Canada; parks sprinkled with noble trees, amid which the gray walls of some ancient home peeped out; plantations made with loving care, field on field, fenced in with well-trimmed trimmed hedges.
It was all eloquent of order, security and long-established ease; a strong contrast to the rugged wilderness where, in the bush and on treeless prairie, men never relaxed their battle with nature. In many ways, his was a stern country; a land of unremitting toil from which one desisted only long enough to eat and sleep, and he was one of the workers. Mrs. Gladwyne had been right—it was no place for this delicately nurtured girl with her sensitiveness and artistic faculties.
“For those who can live as you live, it would be hard to find the equal of this part of England,” he said. “But I’m not sure you can keep it very much longer as it is.”
“Why?” she asked.
It was a relief to talk of matters of minor interest, for he dare not let his thoughts dwell too much on the subject that was nearest them.
“Well,” he replied, “there’s the economic pressure, for one thing; the growth of your cities; the demand for food. I see land lying almost idle that could be made productive at a very moderate outlay. Our people often give nearly as much as it’s worth here for no better soil.”
“But how do they make it pay?”
He laughed.
“The secret is that they expect very little—enough to eat, a shack they build with their own hands to sleep in—and they’re willing to work sixteen hours out of the twenty-four.”