We saw Spoof's oxen breaking trail for an hour or more before they came up to our door. Jack and Jean had also seen them coming, and rushed over to Fourteen to share in extending welcome. It is only among the pioneers that real welcomes occur. Jack swept Spoof into the house, and I turned our own oxen out and put his in the stable.
Spoof's attire in winter, I must tell you, was rather wonderful. He was busily engaged in wearing out a number of grotesque creations bought in London and especially recommended for the Canadian climate. Spoof, now wiser and poorer, mournfully admitted that he had gone to a tailoring firm which advertised as its specialty "Gentlemen's Outfits for the Colonies." There, at a cost of many guineas, he had laden himself with a mass of woolen and fur contraptions which might possibly have been of some value to an Arctic explorer, but which were quite unsuited to latitude fifty, which, by the way, is south of London. Spoof, however, was manfully making the best of it, and as he emerged with some difficulty from his complicated coverings he kept up a running comment of mock appreciation.
"There, you four-guinea leggings," he said at length, "skilfully designed to strangle the circulation and freeze my nether extremities, how joyously would I trade thee for a pair of Canadian felt boots!"
We were soon to learn the cause of Spoof's absence from our threshold for a full three weeks. It seemed that to protect his extensive supply of personal effects Spoof had bought a padlock for his shack, and one frosty morning this padlock fell to the ground. Spoof picked it up, and, wishing to use his hands for some other purpose, thrust the iron link of the lock in his mouth, thinking to hold it there a moment. He had no trouble holding it, but suddenly found to his dismay that he couldn't give it up! The frost in the iron had, with an effect very much like fire, seared his tongue and hung on so tenaciously that when at last he wrenched it out it carried some of the flesh of that tender organ with it.
"I couldn't speak," Spoof explained, in telling of his misfortune, "and there were so many things I needed to say just then."
His predicament had been bad enough. For several days he had been unable to eat. "So I've come over here to make up for it," he added.
After the first outburst over Spoof's arrival had subsided an embarrassing silence yawned across the path of our conversation. There were great things to be said and no one to say them. The girls glanced shyly at each other, and at us, and Jack, by pantomime behind Spoof's back, sought to convey the information that I was elected spokesman. So for lack of preparation I plunged in bodily as one may take a cold dip when he lacks the will power to do it slowly.
"Jack and I have also had a misfortune, of a sort," I said. "We, too, have lost the use of our organs of speech, permanently."
Spoof narrowed his eyebrows quizzically. "Then my ears make up for it," he said. "I hear you as usual."
"It isn't in effect yet," I explained. "We are to be married at Christmas. Behold the parties of the first part," and I waved a hand at Jean and Marjorie while I turned a phrase of Jake's to good account.