The table was already set for tea. Mrs. Clark busied herself infusing the refreshment, then Rita came in and we all sat down together.
Andrew Clark's grace was quite an event,—as long as the ten commandments, sonorous, impressive and flowery.
I found he could talk, and talk well; and of many out-of-the-common subjects he displayed considerably more than a passing knowledge.
Margaret Clark,—for that was the lady's name,—was quiet and seemed docile and careworn. She impressed me as being the patient bearer of a hidden burden.
There was something in the manner in which our conversation was conducted that I could not fathom. And I was set wondering wherein its strangeness lay. But, try as I liked, I could not reason it out. Everybody was agreeable and pleasant; Rita was almost gay. But at the back of it all, time and again it recurred to me,—what is wrong here?
Not until the tea was over and I was seated between Andrew Clark and Margaret before the fire, did the mystery solve itself.
I approached the business part of my visit.
"Mr. Clark, you have two or three hundred chickens on the ranch here."
"Ay," he nodded reflectively, puffing at his pipe.
"You send all your eggs to Vancouver?"