"Marsh!"
"Now don't get tragic! We are all going to look over his plant and have lunch there—they are expecting me. Oh, dear!" she cried, plaintively, "I have seen and heard nothing but canneries ever since we left Vancouver. The men talk nothing but fish and packs and markets and dividends. It's all deadly stupid, and I'm wretchedly tired of it. Father is the worst of the lot, of course."
Emerson's eyes shifted to his own cannery. "You haven't seen mine—ours," said he.
"Oh yes, I have. Mr. Marsh pointed it out to father and me. It looks just like all the others." There was an instant's pause before she ran on. "Do you know, there is only one interesting feature about them, to my notion, and that is the way the Chinamen smoke. Those funny, crooked pipes and those little wads of tobacco are too ridiculous." The lightness of her words damped his ardor, and brought back the sense of failure. That formless huddle of buildings in the distance seemed to him all at once very dull and prosaic. Of course, it was just like scores of others that his sweetheart had seen all the way north from the border-line. He had never thought of that till now.
"I was down with the fishing fleet at the mouth of the bay this morning when you came in. I thought I might see you," he said.
"At that hour? Heavens! I was sound asleep. It was hard enough to get up when we were called. Father might have instructed the captain not to steam so fast."
Boyd stared at her in hurt surprise; but she was smiling at Alton Clyde in the distance, and did not observe his look.
"Don't you care even to hear what I have done?" he inquired.
"Of course," said Mildred, bringing her eyes back to him.
Hesitatingly he told her of his disappointments, the obstacles he had met and overcome, avoiding Marsh's name, and refraining from placing the blame where it belonged. When he had concluded, she shook her head.