Jimmy laughed. "My opinion wouldn't count. I couldn't make a speech for my life."
"No?" said Anthea. "Still, you can hold a steamer's wheel, and perhaps under the circumstances that is quite as much to the purpose. In any case, while your comrade was a little flamboyant, which is much the same thing as Western, I think he meant it. After all, if we parade our sentiments, we generally act up to them."
"Jordan," said Jimmy, "seems to have quite a stock of them."
"And I understand he has put every dollar he has into the venture. Still, I suppose he did it cheerfully; and you may find it necessary to bring those bush-ranchers' produce down against a gale of wind."
There was a smile in her eyes as she looked at him, but in spite of that Jimmy felt his face grow slightly warm. It was not, however, altogether because Anthea noticed it that she changed the subject.
"There was one point that wasn't quite clear to me. Why did he say you were going to break up a monopoly?"
Jimmy wished she had asked him anything else, for he had already decided that Miss Merril knew very little about her father's business.
"Well," he said awkwardly, "that's rather a difficult thing to answer. You see, he mentioned a monopoly——"
"He certainly did."
"Then, to begin with, there is the Dunsmore road. They naturally couldn't handle produce as cheaply as we could, and, anyway, it isn't of much benefit to the ranchers who can't get at it."