"Time enough," said I. "You may fall into their hands before you know it."
Jean eyed me roguishly. "Do you think there's a chance?" she murmured. "That's one of the attractions of the country which you didn't mention."
After two days and two nights we passed through Winnipeg. It was in the grey of dawn, and we did not get off, but through the window we caught a glimpse of lines of lights down a wide and winding street.
Daylight saw us on the prairies; not the "bald-headed," to be sure, but the well settled country of the Portage Plains, where industry was already fructifying in trim houses and barns, and orderly, well-kept farms. And yet here and there was now the unbroken sweep of the prairies, and our eyes danced and something caught our breath as we tried to imagine what they meant. We knew what it was for men to spend their lives in clearing ten, twenty, or forty acres, but here lay a kingdom fresh from the hand of God and ready for the plow. And a piece of that kingdom in the still farther West—320 acres of that kingdom—was to be ours!
"And as much more as I can buy from year to year," said Jack, as though picking up the thread of our thoughts, his face alive with enthusiasm. "Boy!" he said, banging me on the knee, "there's no limit; there's no limit!" I clasped his hand in mine with a pressure that told more than words.
At Brandon we got off to stretch our legs while they changed engines and filled the ice-boxes. It was the last day of April, and the station lay in a yellow flood of lazy spring sunshine. Against the railing which bordered the platform lounged groups of young men in shirt sleeves and overalls, easy-going types of farm laborers waiting for a job to hunt them down. The girls had gone a little ahead, and as they passed such a group a young fellow in high boots and with a blue shirt open about his hairy neck intercepted them with the remark, "Hello, girls; looking for a man?"
Jean turned a contemptuous nose in the air, and would have gone straight on, but Marjorie stopped, rivetted the inquirer with those flashing eyes of hers and said, "Yes; is there one anywhere about?"
The young man threw up his arms as though to admit that the thrust was too much for him, and the girls walked on, while from the lounging groups came loud guffaws intended as a tribute to Marjorie's wit, and more largely, to the goodwill which the group bore toward these two young girls in particular, and to all girls in general.
"I couldn't have said that," said Jean, when they were out of earshot. "I wouldn't have dared."
"Pshaw!" said the worldly-wise Marjorie, "there's nothing to those fellows. I could make any one of them eat out of my hand."