“It isn’t mine,” said Miss Vane. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“But it’s yours, just the same. It’s well you have an aunty to think about you, dearie. You are so excited over your drive with Mr. Burton that you would let the poor boy starve for his trouble.”
For a moment the young woman looked aghast. “Oh, Aunty, you darling,” she cried, as the basket was tucked in the back of the buggy, “and you with so much other work. You should have told me to do it.”
“Hush, hush, child. You may please the young gentleman’s eyes best, but I’m thinkin’ your old aunty still knows the short cut to a man’s heart.”
In the pioneer days the Poplar river had presented a serious obstacle to traffic in the spring and early summer freshets, until old Simon Crotton had squatted on the bank and constructed a passable ford. Simon had a team of shaganappies whose only virtue seemed to be that they were proof against every form of abuse, and when the settler, with his wagonload of rude implements or household effects, became entangled in the river, old Simon, if not too thoroughly intoxicated, could be depended upon to lend the assistance of himself and team, receiving therefore such dole as the settler could afford or his generosity prompted. A fine steel bridge now spanned the river at the spot, and Simon Crotton had long ago been gathered to his fathers, but the place retained the name of Crotton’s Crossing and will probably so be known until the end of time. In such humble ways do common men leave their indelible impress upon a new country.
The road from Grant’s to the crossing lay through a well-settled farming district where almost every acre except the road allowances had come under the plough. At one time the country had been partly covered with shrub, and willows and poplars still grew along the road, affording cover for prairie chickens and resting roosts for their relentless enemy, the hawk. The air was laden with the smell of wild flowers, of bursting buds, of fragrant red willows and balm-of-Gileads. For a mile or two there was little conversation; Burton knew not what to say, and Miss Vane was so enwrapped in the beauty of the country, so thrilled with its glorious air, so inspired with its immensity, that she seemed to have almost forgotten her companion’s presence. At last, as they crested a hill, and a vista of long, narrow road, of neat, quadrangular farms, of comfortable homes, of pastures fencing sleek, drowsy cattle and horses turned out for their Sunday holiday, with a white church and school-house by the road, opened before them, she turned to Burton with a strange mildness in her eyes, and exclaimed, “And still people with means at their command, who are in a measure the masters of their destiny, live in the cities!”
“Then you prefer the country?”
“Prefer! How is any other choice possible? What great thing has ever been that could not be traced to the land?”
“Yet our great men go to the cities, and these men you see about you, these farmers, every one of them laments his lot. They feel that the hands of all mankind are against them.”
“The same spirit prevails in the city, especially among the labouring classes. They think how fortunate they would be if they were wringing their living from the soil, instead of in the service of what they call capital.”