There was a curious choke in the Colonial’s voice which did not escape Philip.
“Yes, do come, Mr. Barrimore,” said Miss Le Breton.
That decided Philip.
“I should much enjoy it,” he said. “It is very kind of you to ask me to go with you.”
“You had better come back with us and have dinner. We are going to dine at five o’clock and dispense with tea to-day. Neither of us has had much luncheon, so we shall have a good appetite, I hope. But you——”
“I have not lunched at all,” Philip told them, “so I shall be able to do justice to dinner though it is early. I will come in about half-past four if I may.”
“Come as early as you like,” said Alvin.
The talk on the way was all of Canada, and Philip found himself wondering why Alvin had come to England, since he had apparently left his heart in Canada.
They walked their horses abreast unless the coming of a vehicle made it necessary to fall out of line, and it was Alvin who did most of the talking.
“This time of the year I should be hauling wheat into Broadview, as likely as not, if I were back in Canada,” he said. “I came over at the end of November, the only other time I came to England. I was ‘Batching’ with a young fellow then. Lord! how we worked to get all rounded up! We were loading all the Sunday, I remember. We took about five hundred bushels of wheat to Broadview, and put a new floor in the granary; got in and cut up the wood, lined up the shack, deepened and cribbed the wells all within the inside of a fortnight—and the temperature below zero!”