"But what else kin you do?" Glaves cried at last, in despair.
"Go to Winnipeg and take a place in an office or store."
Though she affected brightness, she could not altogether hide the dejection, homesickness that inhered in the thought. Now that she was to leave it, that rude cabin, with its log walls, legal patchwork, home-made furniture, glowed with the glamours of home. Even Mrs. Glaves's gaunt ugliness became suddenly dear in the light of an indefinite future among strangers.
Detecting her underlying sadness, Flynn exclaimed: "Phwat? Wurrk in a sthore? Sell pins, naydles, an' such truck while I've a roof over me head? Ye'd die in thim lonesome hotels. Ye 'll just come right home wid me."
"Likely, ain't it?" Glaves broke in, jealous for his prerogative. "In the first place, if she goes, she ain't agoing to stop at no hotel, but with my own sister that keeps a boarding-house on Main Street. An' if she stays, it'll be right here, with me—eh, old woman?"
His wife's warm assent brought Helen to tears without, however, affecting her resolution. For the settlement would be by the ears, she said, just as long as she stayed in it.
"Humph!" Glaves growled. "It'll have itself be the throat afore long. Yesterday Poole an' Danvers ran their mowers into Shinn's five-acre swamp, an' if that don't bring that big Injin a-kiting from the tall timber, I'm Dutch."
She was not, however, to be moved, and after an embarrassed pause Flynn said, hesitatingly: "Thim cities, now, is mighty ixpinsive. A lone girl without money—ye'll let me—"
Digging a shabby bill-book from the bottom depths of his overalls, he precipitated a second kindly quarrel. Glaring at it, Glaves snorted, "When she knows she kin draw on me for the vally of my last head of stock down to the dog!"
Having means for some months, this storm was more easily laid than that which burst when Flynn offered to drive her in to Lone Tree.