"Yes, yes," insisted the group, "your name!"
"'Tis the same as it has always been," he answered, blithely, turning on his heel. "I haven't changed it yet. Any time ye want me just ask at headquarters for Himself, for Scarlett of the Mounted."
VI
EVELYN SEEKS COUNSEL
A few days later Evelyn, accompanied by Sarah, knocked at the door of St. Andrew's Mission, near Perdu. An Indian woman opened to her, and on her asking for Mr. Maclane, the minister came forward with a cordial welcome.
"I won't invite you in, since just at present my study is in requisition as a hospital, and in any case you will doubtless prefer the veranda with its vista of the mountains."
"And your lovely garden," added Evelyn, glancing at the beds in which vegetables and ornamental plants were growing in orderly profusion. "I never supposed that cultivation was possible so far north."
"That is a common mistake," replied the minister. "But it is the same with plants as with people: wherever it is possible for them to grow it is intended that they should be cultivated; by which I do not mean that we should take the nature out of them, teaching them tricks and artificial ways; I mean that we should improve the conditions surrounding them, in order that their natural tendencies and activities may have the widest scope for beneficent purposes."
"And yet"—Evelyn looked up and down the road—"you seem to be almost the only one who recognizes these possibilities. All the cabins seem to have been dropped in uncompromising rows along the highways, as if they were so many children's toys taken out of cardboard boxes labeled 'Made in Germany'."