“Well, sir, don’t it look like it? You have windows, and likewise eyes. Miss Lane’s always coming over to the bungalow on that cycle of hers.”
“Which to me don’t seem right and proper for a young lady to do,” put in Mrs. Pickett. “I wonder at Colonel Lane allowing it. If it was my Minnie, she’d hear about it! Why, it’s the talk of Hastings; my friend Mrs. Hannington says so. Miss Lane is staying at Hawk’s Nest now, while her father’s gadding off somewhere. There is talk that he has got another establishment near London. Of course, that being so, he wouldn’t look after his daughter properly, not having proper notions of right and wrong.”
“Mother!” broke out Pickett, pausing in the act of carving a chicken. “I wonder at your repeating tales like that! Every time Mrs. Hannington comes, there is some new yarn to somebody’s discredit. I can’t bear the sight of her!”
Eweretta ate her chicken, with her eyes cast down. She did not like this type of conversation. Mrs. Le Breton, too, looked uncomfortable.
Alvin, who noted this, began hastily to introduce a new topic. Naturally the topic was Canada, as he knew little about anything else. “There will be blizzards in Canada now,” he began. “You wouldn’t think it, that a great fire could rage there at this time of the year? Yet I remember one when I was on my way to Saskatoon. It was a line of fire six miles long, and the flames were seven feet high. It could be seen forty miles away; and that was in October.”
Farmer Pickett smiled discreetly. He would not contradict his guest, but he evidently believed him to be pulling the long bow.
“How perfectly awful!” exclaimed Minnie, who did believe the tale.
“It was a grand sight,” said Alvin.
Mrs. Le Breton shivered. She had seen such “grand sights” unpleasantly near.
Alvin pointed to the sleeping dogs. “Now I daresay you think your dogs good herders,” he said; “but I had a pony that would beat them hollow.”