"Oh! look there, Philip--here is a school!"
Elizabeth bent forward eagerly. On the bare prairie stood a small white house, like the house that children draw on their slates: a chimney in the middle, a door, a window on either side. Outside, about twenty children playing and dancing. Inside, through the wide-open doorway a vision of desks and a few bending heads.
Philip's patience was put to it. Had she supposed that children went without schools in Canada?
But she took no heed of him.
"Look how lovely the children are, and how happy! What'll Canada be when they are old? And not another sign of habitation anywhere--nothing--but the little house--on the bare wide earth! And there they dance, as though the world belonged to them. So it does!"
"And my sister to a lunatic asylum!" said Philip, exasperated. "I say, why doesn't that man Anderson come and see us?"
"He promised to come in and lunch."
"He's an awfully decent kind of fellow," said the boy warmly.
Elizabeth opened her eyes.
"I didn't know you had taken any notice of him, Philip."