“So far we have had absolutely nothing to complain of except a little jolting in the stage,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand why adventurous sight-seers are coming out here—it’s a glorious country!”
“It’s my duty to point out that it won’t be quite the same as we go on,” Nasmyth remarked. “What do you say, Carew?”
“It doesn’t matter; he’s said it all before,” Bella broke in. “I’ve had to listen to appalling accounts of his previous adventures in Canada, which were, no doubt, meant to deter me; but the reality is that the hotels at Banff and Glacier are remarkably comfortable, and I haven’t the least fault to find with this camp. We ought to be grateful to Millicent for letting us come, and though Arthur hinted that it would be a rather sociable honeymoon, I said that was a safeguard. One’s illusions might get sooner shattered in a more conventional one.” She stooped and ruffled her husband’s hair. “Still, he hasn’t deteriorated very much on closer acquaintance, and perhaps I’m fortunate in this.”
Millicent sat silent for a few moments. She knew, to her sorrow, one man who did not improve the more one saw of him, and that was the man she had tacitly agreed to marry. She could not tell why she had done so—she had somehow drifted into it. Interest, family associations, a feeling that could best be described as liking, even pity, had played their part in influencing her, and now she realized that she could not honorably draw back when he formally claimed her. She laughed as one of the packers who had a good voice broke into a song.
“That’s the climax; it needs only the cockney accent to make the thing complete,” she said. “When I was last in London, one heard that silly jingle everywhere. I suppose it’s a triumph of the music-halls.”
“Or of modern civilization—a rendering of distance of no account,” suggested Carew. “There’s a good deal to be said for the latter achievement, as we are discovering.”
“Distance,” declared Bella, “still counts for something here. I’ve been thinking about Jim all day; imagining him dragging his canoe through the timber beyond those hills, and wondering whether he’d find us when he got to the other side.”
“She has been doing more,” her husband broke in. “Though she hasn’t confessed it, she has been looking out for him ever since this morning. In fact, I discovered that our cook is keeping a supper ready that would satisfy four or five men.”
Bella turned to Millicent with a smile.
“Do you think the meal will be wasted?” she asked.