In a moment I knew he was right. He had not asked me if I thought that Jack would play second fiddle to a new father, but that, too, may have been in his mind.
"Well, what are we to do about it?"
"Go west!" he said, emphatically. "Go west! I am beginning to think it's the only thing for a young fellow to do, anyway. What is there here for us? Drudge away in the mill, seven to six, seven to six, seven to six, seven to six, week in, month in, year in; then, some day, caught on a shaft, and they stop the mill just long enough to untangle your remains. And that is life! By God, Frank, it's not life—as I see it—as I'm going to see it!"
I turned to him in surprise; it was the first time I had heard him use such an expression. His teeth were set; his thin lips were pressed together; his eyes were big and luminous in the twilight; his pose was a picture of resolution, even of defiance. All unknown to me, Jack Lane had become a man, and his exclamation had had more of prayer than of profanity in it.
Presently he continued: "We can go out to that new country, west of Manitoba, and take up a homestead each. In a few years we will have land enough to make a dozen of these Ontario farms. Others are doing it—so can we. And it won't be so hard for us. The worst thing, usually, is the loneliness; holding it down in a shack, three years or more, all by one's self. But we can get claims beside each other, and, although we'll have to have separate shacks, the girls will keep house for us, so it won't be so bad."
He had touched on something which had already come into my mind. "Will the girls go?" I questioned.
"Frank," he said, and again he seemed to speak from some superior wisdom of his own, "those girls will go with us anywhere we ask them—anywhere!"
CHAPTER III.
When I laid the proposal before Marjorie, she listened with a complacency which suggested that the idea was not entirely new to her.
"I will go and keep house for you," she said, frankly, "if Jack and Jean go too."