"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy."
"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes you best."
"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see."
"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be 'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going to call him, Pearlie—or is it a him?"
"I—I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes dreamily on the infant, "but of course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't be any Freddies in our family now, can there."
"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a man. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred."
Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin.
In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) own fault; for the country—unlike the city—is quick to see and ready to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburn grain-grower, who had never taken any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator.
"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had remarked; but—he slapped Ed on the shoulder—"a man that's helped that poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy—an' watch them grain checks."
Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the infant—who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat surlily—he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment: