"Mamma, he'll never drink again if I ask him not to."
"Ask him, then. And be sharp about it. But it's precious little you know about men's promises, young lady. Pie crusts, every one of them. Look at your father. Who'd ever have dreamt that he'd become a drunkard? A life-long abstainer, nearly. Why, he used to fly into awful tempers just after we were married, all because James Tipplin, the millionaire brewer, presented our chapel with a stained-glass window. There was a fearful to-do about it; and your father——"
"But, mamma, darling; Bertie cares for me sufficiently to keep all his promises. He says so."
"——And your father left our chapel and went over to the High Street Primitives; but, when he found that one of their trustees had a cousin who kept a grocer's shop with an outdoor beer license, he returned to the old place. Your father used to be dead against the drink traffic. He was the one they tried to persuade to warn the ministers not to preach temperance when Jimmy Tipplin was in his pew. But your father refused. They said they'd picked him because he was so full of tact. Tact! your father! H'm! What funny judges of men other men are. It takes a woman to read a man—a married woman, that is. Why, your father would have sold the Distillery shares his Uncle Toby left him if it hadn't been for me." Martha Trailey once more contemplated the scene around her. After ruminating for a little while, she went on: "But we've got them yet, thank goodness!—and when I look round at this great big wilderness, the colour of soot, and wonder what's going to become of us all, it's a blessing we have."
Mrs. Trailey's remarks here came to an end. Her spouse had toiled wearily into camp with a heavy bucket one-third filled with water containing some very interesting zoological specimens. Most of the Western fauna and flora, barring buffalo and pine trees, appeared to be represented therein. If there is any truth in the theory that man is distantly related to the lower forms of life, then the Barr Colonists must have swallowed a good many of their uncles and aunts whilst trekking from Saskatoon.
William Trailey set the pail down with such an enthusiastic thud of relief that some of the aquatic life slapped over on to his wife's hands, just as she was picking up a saucer out of the other pail to dry it.
Trailey wiped the accumulated sweat off his unwrinkled brow with his handkerchief and stammered a brief apology.
"Oh-h-h-h! Take it off! Take it off!" screamed Mrs. Trailey, as something resembling a miniature alligator fastened itself on the back of her hand. She was the sort of woman who found it very difficult not to become hysterical when she felt anything crawling on her flesh. If human beings are blood brothers to the worm, why does this abhorrence persist?
Esther, with marvellous presence of mind, pulled her skirts tightly round her legs and commenced to echo her mother's "Oh's." This display of filial affection and sympathy proved so soothing to Martha Trailey that she immediately stopped shrieking and merely continued to moan that she was being eaten alive. "Oh, take it away, somebody! I'm blood-poisoned! My arm's swelling as big as a tree already; I can feel it."
"My own darling mamma," sobbed Esther, throwing her arms round her mother's neck. "Oh, if Bertie were only here."