“Fences would naturally be obnoxious to you. But we have some here.”
“They’re generally built loose, of split-rails, and not nailed. An energetic man can pull off a bar or two and stride over. If it’s necessary, he can afterwards put them up again, and there’s no harm done.”
“Would you do the latter?”
Vane’s expression changed. “No,” he said. “I think if there were anything good on the other side, I’d widen the gap so that the less agile and the needy could crawl through.” He smiled at her. “You see, I owe some of them a good deal. They were the only friends I had when I first tramped, jaded and footsore, about the province.”
Jessie was pleased with his answer. She had heard of the bush choppers’ free hospitality, and she thought it was a graceful thing that he should acknowledge his debt to them.
“Now at last you’ll be content to rest a while,” she suggested. “I dare say you deserve it.”
“It’s strange you should say that, because just before you came out of the house I was thinking that I’d sat still long enough,” Vane answered with a laugh. “It’s a thing that gets monotonous. One must keep going on.”
“Then,” said Jessie, “take care you don’t walk over a precipice some day when you have left all the fences behind. But I’ve kept you from your meditations, and I had better see if Mrs. Nairn is coming.”
She left him, and he was lighting a cigar when he noticed a girl whose appearance seemed familiar in the road below. Moving along the verandah, he recognised her as Kitty, and hastily crossed the lawn towards her. She was accompanied by a young man whom Vane had once seen in the city, but she greeted him with evident pleasure.
“Tom,” she said, when they had exchanged a few words, “this is Mr. Vane,” Then turning to Vane she added: “Mr. Drayton.”