"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you 're queerer with your ideas of money."
I laughed back at him as I went out of the office:
"I can pay the Doctor now, Jamie. I 'm rich, you know."
XXV
We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office. Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain, whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of land.
Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.
I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a widower.
He stared at me for a moment.
"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.