"He did no such thing! He asked me where we were going to settle, and I told him I didn't know, and he said he hoped he would be patrolling there. He's going to be sent out from barracks soon, and he said it would be safer for me—for us—if someone were patrolling our district."
"Not for you, dear," said Marjorie, meaningly, and there was a little sting in her words which brought me into action.
"I believe you're jealous, Marjorie," I said, in tones intended to be severe.
"And aren't you?" she retorted. "You ought to be."
The truth is, I was. Jean had always belonged to me so absolutely that I had never thought of the possibility of a rival. Even now I did not think of such a thing seriously. It was true that there was no engagement between us, unless the word of a man of six and a woman of four can be taken as binding, but I looked on Jean as mine, nevertheless, and I resented the action of the Mounted Policeman in seeking her acquaintance. I resented, too, the fact that she had gone walking with him, and I told her so at the first opportunity.
It came that afternoon. Jean said she was tired riding, and got down to walk, on my side of the wagon. We trudged along for some distance in silence, save for my occasional words of rebuke and exhortation to the oxen.
"You're cross at me," she said at length.
"I'm not." Why I said that I can't imagine, I was, and I wanted her to know it.
"I didn't mean to offend you," she went on. "Marjorie was just a little bit—spiteful."
"I know she was," I agreed. "But you shouldn't have gone walking with him."