"Jim," she said, after a while, when the noise of the milking was drowned in the creamy froth, "I'm getting near the end of this kind of thing. Father's getting more and more set on money all the time. He thinks I should slave along too to pile up more beside what he's got already, but I'm not going to do it much longer. Mother stands it—I guess she's got used to him, and she won't say anything, but if there's anything I'm not strong on it's silence. I'm not afraid of work, or hardship either. I'd live in a sack if I had to. I'd—"
"Would you live in a shack?" said Jim.
She shot a quick look at him. But he was quietly smiling into his milk-pail, and she decided to treat his question impersonally.
"Yes, I'd live in a shack, too, if I had to. I put in my first years in a sod-house, and there was more real happiness romping up and down the land then than there is now. In those days everybody was so poor that money didn't count…It's different now."
Jim did not pursue the subject, and the milking was completed in silence. Jim finished first, and presently the rising hum of the cream separator was heard from the kitchen.
"There he goes, winding his arm off—for me," said the girl, as she rose from the last cow. "Poor Jim—I wish I knew whether it's just human kindness makes him do it, or whether—" She stopped, colouring a little over the thought that had almost escaped into words.
When the heavy grind of the separating was finished Jim went quietly to his own room, but the girl put on a clean dress and walked out through the garden. Rows of mignonette and lobelia bordered the footpath, and sweet, earthy garden smells filled the calm evening air. The rows of currant and gooseberry bushes were heavy with green fruit; the leaves of the Manitoba maples trembled ever so little in the still air. The sun was setting, and fleecy fragments of cloud were painted ruddy gold against the silver background of the sky. From the barnyard came the contented sighing of the cows and the anxious clucking of a hen gathering in her belated brood. The whole country seemed bathed in peace—a peace deep and unpurchasable, having no part in any of the affairs of man.
At the lower gate she stooped to pick a flower, which she held for a moment to her face; then, toying lightly with it in her fingers, she slipped the latch and continued along the path leading down into the ravine. It was dark and cool down there, with a touch of dampness in the grass, and the balm-of-Gileads across the stream sent a fine moist fragrance through the air. To the right lay the bench where the sod-house had stood, not so much as a mound now marking the spot; but the thoughts of the girl turned yearningly to it, and to the days of the lonely but not unhappy childhood which it had sheltered.
Presently she reached the water, and her quick ear caught the sound of a musk-rat slipping gently into the stream from the reeds on the opposite bank; she could see the widening wake where he ploughed his swift way across the pond. Then her own figure stood up before her, graceful and lithe as the willows on the bank. She surveyed it a minute, then flicked the flower at her face in the water, and turned slowly homeward. She was not unhappy, but a dull sense of loss oppressed her—a sense that the world was very rich and very beautiful, and that she was feasting neither on its richness nor its beauty. There was a stirring of music and poetry in her soul, but neither music nor poetry found expression. What she felt was a consciousness that great things were just beyond the horizon of her experience, things undefined and undefinable which, could she but grasp them, would deepen life and sweeten life and give a purpose to all her being. And as she walked up the path and the fragrant night air filled her nostrils, something of that wilder life seemed borne in upon her and sent a fresh spring to her ankle. And presently she discovered she was thinking about Jim Travers.
Her mother sat in the dining-room, knitting by the light of the hanging lamp. Her face seemed very pale and lovely in the soft glow.