“But where do the cats come in?” asked Phil.
“You wouldn’t ask that if you had had to punt them out all day, to-day, as I did. But, punning aside:––Sing and his kind think that when there’s no light, safety lies in having black cats around. Somehow, his Satanic Majesty––poor devil––is scared for black cats.”
The conversation changed as Phil surveyed the interior of the house. He found a great change had come over their abode. For one thing, it was decidedly cosier. The damp, bug-like feel had gone from the place. An odour of varnish pervaded. The holes in the ceiling and floors had been boarded over, the windows were clean and had curtains on, the stove was polished, and a general air of home comfort was present.
Jim had made an auspicious start.
And every day thereafter showed an added improvement, for it was little that Langford was able to do out-of-doors in that in-between season just prior to the freezing up––and all his energies were evidently being divided between the fixing up of the house and his usual contributions to Aunt Christina’s love column and Captain Mayne Plunkett’s monthly “thriller.”
They had hardly been three weeks on the ranch, when the winter set in for good and shackled the earth in snow and ice.
The morning and evening rides in and out to the smithy were a perfect delight to Phil and they set his blood effervescing in his veins as it had never done before.
Many an evening when it was getting late and the great whiteness around was deathly still, he and Jim would stand on the front veranda and smoke a pipe together, as they silently drank in the beauty of the scene about them.
Jim was by nature a dreamer, and it only required an occasion such as that to set him brooding.