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THE LAND OF PROMISE

CHAPTER I

Nora opened her eyes to an unaccustomed consciousness of well-being. She was dimly aware that it had its origin in something deeper than mere physical comfort; but for the moment, in that state between sleeping and wakening, which still held her, it was enough to find that body and mind seemed rested.

Youth was reasserting itself. And it was only a short time ago that she had felt that never, never, could she by any possible chance feel young again. When one is young, one resents the reaction after any strain not purely physical as if it were a premature symptom of old age.

A ray of brilliant sunshine, which found its way through a gap in the drawn curtains, showed that it was long past the usual hour for rising. She smiled whimsically and closed her eyes once more. She remembered now that she was not in her own little room in the other wing of the house. The curtains proved that. How often in the ten years she had been with Miss Wickham had she begged that the staring white window blind, which decorated her one window, be replaced by curtains or even a blind of a dark tone that she might not be awakened by the first ray of light. She had even ventured to propose that the cost of such alterations be stopped out of her salary. Miss Wickham had refused to countenance any such innovation.

Three years before, when the offending blind had refused to hold together any longer, Nora had had a renewal of hope. But no! The new blind had been more glaringly white than its predecessor, which by contrast had taken on a grateful ivory tone in its old age. They had had one of their rare scenes at its advent. Nora had as a rule an admirable control of her naturally quick temper. But this had been too much.

"I might begin to understand your refusal if you ever entered my room. But since it would no more occur to you to do so than to visit the stables, I cannot see what possible difference it can make," Nora had stormed.

Miss Wickham's smile, which at the beginning of her companion's outburst had been faintly ironic, had broadened into the frankly humorous.

"Stated with your characteristic regard for exactitude, my dear Miss Marsh, it would never enter my head to do either. I prefer the white blind, however. As you know, I have no taste for explanations. We will let the matter rest there, if you please." Then she had added: "Some day, I strongly suspect, some man will amuse himself breaking that fiery temper of yours. I wish I were not so old, I think that I should enjoy knowing that he had succeeded." And the incident had ended, as always, with a few angry tears on Nora's part, as a preliminary to the inevitable game of bezique which finished off each happy day!

And this had been her life for ten years! A wave of pity, not for herself but for that young girl of eighteen who had once been herself, that proudly confident young creature who, when suddenly deprived of the protection of her only parent,--Nora's father had died when she was too young to remember him,--had so bravely faced the world, serene in the consciousness that the happiness which was her right was sure to be hers after a little waiting, dimmed her eyes for a moment. The dreams she had dreamed after she had received Miss Wickham's letter offering her the post of companion! She recalled how she had smiled to herself when the agent with whom she had filed her application congratulated her warmly on her good fortune in placing herself so promptly, and, by way of benediction, had wished that she might hold the position for many years. Many years indeed! That had been no part of her plan. Those nebulous plans had always been consistently rose-colored. It was impossible to remember them all now.

Sometimes the unknown Miss Wickham turned out to be a soft-hearted and sentimental old lady who was completely won by her young companion's charm and unmistakable air of good breeding. After a short time, she either adopted her, or, on dying, left her her entire fortune.

Again, she proved to be a perfect ogre. In this variation it was always the Prince Charming, that looms large in every young girl's dreams, who finally, after a brief period of unhappiness, came to the rescue and everything ended happily if somewhat conventionally.

The reality had been sadly different. Miss Wickham had disclosed herself as being a hard, self-centered, worldly woman who considered that in furnishing her young companion with board, lodging and a salary of thirty pounds a year, she had, to use a commercial phrase, obtained the option on her every waking hour, and indeed, during the last year of her life, she had extended this option to cover many of the hours which should have been dedicated to rest and sleep.

All the fine plans that the young Nora had made while journeying down from London to Tunbridge Wells, for going on with her music, improving herself in French and perhaps taking up another modern language, in her leisure hours, had been nipped in the bud before she had been an inmate of Miss Wickham's house many days. She had no leisure hours. Miss Wickham saw to that. She had apparently an abhorrence for her own unrelieved society that amounted to a positive mania. She must never be left alone. Let Nora but escape to her own little room in the vain hope of obtaining a few moments to herself, and Kate, the parlor maid, was certain to be sent after her.

"Miss Wickham's compliments and she was waiting to be read to." "Miss Wickham's compliments, but did Miss Marsh know that the horses were at the door?" "Miss Wickham's compliments, and should she have Kate set out the backgammon board?"

And upon the rare occasions when there was company in the house, Miss Wickham's ingenuity in providing occupation for dear Miss Marsh, while she was herself occupied with her friends, was inexhaustible. In an evil hour Nora had confessed to a modest talent for washing lace. Miss Wickham, it developed, had a really fine collection of beautiful pieces which naturally required the most delicate handling. Their need for being washed was oddly coincident with the moment when the expected guest arrived at the door.

Or, it appeared that the slugs had attacked the rose trees in unusual numbers. The gardener was in despair as he was already behind with setting out the annuals. "Would Miss Marsh mind while Miss Wickham had her little after-luncheon nap----!" Miss Marsh did mind. She loved flowers; to arrange them was a delight--at least it had been once--but she hated slugs. But she was too young and too inexperienced to know how to combat the subtle encroachments upon her own time made by this selfish old woman. And so, gradually, she had found that she was not only companion, but a sort of superior lady's maid and assistant gardener as well. And all for thirty pounds a year and her keep.

And alas! Prince Charming had never appeared, unless--Nora laughed aloud at the thought--he had disguised himself with a cleverness defying detection. With Reginald Hornby, a callow youth, the son of Miss Wickham's dearest friend, who occasionally made the briefest of duty visits; Mr. Wynne, the family solicitor, an elderly bachelor; and the doctor's assistant, a young person by the name of Gard, Nora's list of eligible men was complete. There had been a time when Nora had flirted with the idea of escaping from bondage by becoming the wife of young Gard.

He was a rather common young man, but he had been sincerely in love with her. He was not sufficiently subtle to recognize that it was the idea of escaping from Miss Wickham and the deadly monotony of her days that tempted her. He had laid his case before Miss Wickham. There had been some terrible scenes. Nora had felt the lash of her employer's bitter tongue. Partly because she was still smarting from the attack, and partly because she was indignant with her suitor for having gone to Miss Wickham at all and particularly without consulting her, she, too, had turned on the unfortunate young man. There had been mutual recriminations and reproaches, and young Gard, after his brief and bitter experience with the gentry, had left the vicinity of Tunbridge Wells and later on married a girl of his own class.

But Miss Wickham had been more shaken at the prospect of losing her young companion, who was so thoroughly broken in, than she would have liked to have confessed. She detested new faces about her, and as a matter of fact, she came as nearly caring for Nora as it was possible for her to care for any human being. She had told the girl then that it was her intention to make some provision for her at her death, so that she might have a decent competence and not be obliged to look for another position. There was, of course, the implied understanding that she would remain with Miss Wickham until that lady was summoned to a better and brighter world, a step which Miss Wickham, herself, was in no immediate hurry to take. In the meantime, she knew perfectly well just how often a prospective legacy could be dangled before expectant eyes with perfect delicacy.

It furnished her with an additional weapon, too, against her nephew, James Wickham, and his wife, both of whom she cordially detested, although she fully intended leaving them the bulk of her fortune. The consideration and tenderness she showed toward Nora when Mr. and Mrs. Wickham ran down from London to see their dear aunt showed a latent talent for comedy, on the part of the chief actress, of no mean order. These occasions left Nora in a state of mind in which exasperation and amusement were about equally blended. It was amusing to note the signs of apprehension on the part of Miss Wickham's disagreeable relatives as they noted their aunt's doting fondness for her hired companion. And while she felt that they richly deserved this little punishment, it was humiliating to be so cynically made use of.

And now it was all over. After a year of illness and gradual decline the end had come two days before. Nothing could induce Miss Wickham to have a professional nurse. The long strain and weeks of broken rest had told even on Nora's strength. Kindly Dr. Evans had insisted that she be put immediately to bed and Kate, the parlor maid, who had always been devoted to her, had undressed her as if she had been a baby. For the last two days she had done little but sleep the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. And to-day was the day of the funeral. She was just about to ring to find the time, when Kate's gentle knock came at the door.

"Come in. Good morning, Kate. Do tell me the time. Oh! How good it is to be lazy once in a while."

"Good morning to you, Miss. I hope you're feeling a bit rested. It's just gone eleven. Dr. Evans has called, Miss. He told me to see if you had waked."

"How good of him. Ask him to wait a few moments and I'll come right down." 'Coming right down' was not so easy a matter as she had thought. Nora found herself strangely weak and languid. She was still sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to gather energy for the task of dressing, when Kate returned.

"I beg your pardon, Miss, but Dr. Evans says you're not to get up until he sees you. I'm to bring you a bit of toast and your tea and to help you freshen up a bit and then he will come up in twenty minutes. He says to tell you that he has plenty of time."

Nora made a show of protest. Secretly she was rather glad to give in. She had not reckoned with the weakness following two unaccustomed days in bed. Dr. Evans was a kindly elderly man, whose one affectation was the gruffness which the country doctor of the old school so often assumes as if he wished to emphasize his disapproval of the modern suave manner of his city _confrre_. He had a sardonic humor and a sharp tongue which had at first quite terrified Nora, until she discovered that they were meant to hide the most generous heart in the world. Many were the kindly acts he performed in secret for the very people he was most accustomed to abuse.

Having felt Nora's pulse and looked at her sharply with his keen gray eyes, he settled the question of her attendance at Miss Wickham's funeral with his accustomed finality.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," he growled. "You may get up after a while and go and sit in the garden a bit; the air is fairly spring-like. But this afternoon you must lie down again for an hour or two. I suppose you'll have to get up to do the civil for James Wickham and his wife before they go back to town. Oh, no! they'll not stay the night. They'll rush back as fast as the train will take them, once they've heard the will read. Couldn't bear the associations with the place, now that their dear aunt has departed!" He gave one of his sardonic chuckles.

"It may be nonsense"--this in reply to Nora's remonstrance--"but I'm not going to have you on my hands next. You'll go to that funeral and get hysterical like all women, and begin to think that you wish her back. I should think this last year would have been about all anyone would want. But you're a poor sentimental creature, after all," he jeered.

"I'm nothing of the sort. But I did feel sorry for her, badly as she often treated me. She was a desperately lonely old soul. Nobody cared a bit about her, really, and she knew it."

"In spite of all her little amiable tricks to make people love her," said the doctor. "Now, remember, the garden for an hour this morning, the drawing-room later in the day, after you've rested for an hour or so. And don't dare disobey me." With that, he left.

It was pleasant in the garden. The air, though chilly, held the promise of spring. Warmly wrapped in an old cape, which the thoughtful Kate had discovered somewhere, with a book on Paris and some Italian sketches to fall back upon when her own thoughts ceased to divert her, Nora sat in a sheltered corner and looked out on the border which would soon be gay with the tulips whose green stocks were just beginning to push themselves up through the brown earth. Poor Miss Wickham! She had been so proud of her garden always. But for her it had bloomed for the last time. Would the James Wickhams take as much pride in it? Somehow, she fancied not. And she? Where would she be a year from now? A year! Where would she be in another month?

The whole world, in a modest sense, would he hers to choose from. While she had no definite notion as to the amount of her legacy, she had understood that it would bring in sufficient income to keep her from the necessity of seeking further employment. Probably something between two and three hundred pounds a year. She had always longed to travel. Italy, France, Germany, Spain, she would see them all. One could live very reasonably in really good pensions abroad, she had been told.

And then, some day, after a few years of happy wandering, she might adventure to that far-off Canada where her only brother was living the life of a frontiersman on an incredibly huge farm. She had not seen him for many years, but her heart warmed at the thought of seeing her only relative again. He was much older. Yes, Eddie must now be about forty. Oh, all of that. She, herself, was almost twenty-eight. But she wouldn't go to him for several years. He had done one thing which seemed to her quite dreadful. He had made an unfortunate marriage with a woman far beneath him socially. Men were so weak! Because they fancied themselves lonely, or even captivated by a pretty face, they were willing to make impossible marriages. Women were different. Still, she had the grace to blush when she recalled the episode of the doctor's assistant.

Yes, she would go out to Eddie after his wife had had the chance to form herself a little more. Living with a husband so much superior was bound to have its influence. And she must have some really good qualities at bottom or she could never have attracted him. There was nothing vicious about her brother. She must write him of Miss Wickham's death. They were neither of them fond of writing. It must be nearly a year since she had heard from him last. And then, it was so difficult to keep up a correspondence when people had no mutual friends and so little in common.

A glance at her watch told her that it must be nearly time for the London Wickhams to arrive. It would be better not to see them, unless they sent for her, until after they had returned from the cemetery. They were just the sort of people to think that she was forgetting her position if she had the manner of playing hostess by receiving them. Thank goodness! she would probably never see them again after to-day.

With a word to Kate that she would presently have her luncheon in her room and then rest for a few hours until the people returned after the funeral, she made her way to her own bare little room. How cold and bare it was! With the exception of the framed pictures of her father and mother and a small photograph of Eddie, taken before he had gone out, there was nothing but the absolutely necessary furniture. Miss Wickham's ideas of what a 'companion's' room should be like had partaken of the austere. And all the rest of the house was so crowded and overloaded with things. The drawing-room had always been an eyesore to Nora, crammed as it was with little tables and cabinets containing china. And in every available space there were porcelain ornaments and photographs in huge silver frames. It was all like a badly arranged museum or a huddled little curio shop. Well, she would soon be done with that, too!

Armed with her portfolio and writing materials Nora returned to the guest chamber, which was her temporary abode. The motherly Kate was waiting with an appetizing lunch on a neat tray. What a good friend she had been. She would be genuinely sorry to part with Kate. She must ask her to give her some address that would always reach her. Who knew, years hence when she returned to England, but what she might afford to set up a modest flat with Kate to manage things for her. She would speak to her on the morrow--after the will was read.

"Ah, Kate, you knew just what would tempt me. Thank you so much! By the way, has Miss Pringle sent any message?"

"Yes, Miss. Miss Pringle stopped on her way to the village a moment ago. She was with Mrs. Hubbard and had only a moment. I was to tell you that she would call this afternoon and hoped you could see her. I told her, Miss, that the doctor had said you were not to go to the burial. She will come while they are away."

"Let me know the moment she comes. I want to see her very much."

Miss Pringle was the only woman friend Nora had made in the years of her sojourn at Tunbridge Wells. They had little in common beyond the fellow-feeling that binds those in bondage. Miss Pringle was also a companion. Her task mistress, Mrs. Hubbard, was in Nora's opinion, about as stolidly brainless as a woman could well be. Miss Pringle was always lauding her kindness. But then Miss Pringle had been a companion to various rich women for thirty years. Nora had her own ideas as to the value of the opinions of any woman who had been in slavery for thirty years.

Having eaten her luncheon and written her letter to her brother, she felt glad to rest once more. How wise the doctor had been to forbid her to go to the funeral, and how grateful she was that he had forbidden it, was her last waking thought.

CHAPTER II

It was well on to three o'clock when Miss Pringle made her careful way up the path that led to the late Miss Wickham's door.

"How strange it will be not to find her in her own drawing-room!" she reflected. "I don't recall that Nora Marsh and I have ever been alone together for two consecutive minutes in our lives. I simply couldn't have stood it."

"I'll tell Miss Marsh you're here, Miss Pringle," said Kate, at the door.

"How is she to-day, Kate?"

"Still tired out, poor thing. The doctor made her promise to lie down directly after she had had a bite of luncheon. But she said I was to let her know the moment you came, Miss."

"I'm very glad she didn't go to the funeral."

"Dr. Evans simply wouldn't hear of it, Miss."

"I wonder how she stood it all these months, waiting on Miss Wickham hand and foot. She should have been made to have a professional nurse."

"It wasn't very easy to make Miss Wickham have anything she had made up her mind not to, you know that, Miss," said Kate as she led the way to the drawing-room. "Miss Marsh slept in Miss Wickham's room towards the last, and the moment she fell asleep Miss Wickham would have her up because her pillow wanted shaking or she was thirsty, or something."

"I suppose she was very inconsiderate."

Miss Pringle did not in general approve of discussing things with servants. But Nora had told her frequently how faithfully Kate looked after her and, as far as it was possible, made things bearable, so she felt she could make an exception of her.

"Inconsiderate isn't the word, Miss. I wouldn't be a lady's companion," Kate paused, her hand on the doorknob, to make a sweeping gesture, "not for anything. What they have to put up with!"

"Everyone isn't like Miss Wickham," said Miss Pringle, a trifle sharply. "The lady I'm companion to, Mrs. Hubbard, is kindness itself."

"That sounds like Miss Marsh coming down the stairs now," said Kate, opening the door. "Miss Pringle is here, Miss."

As Kate closed the door behind her, Nora advanced to meet her friend from the doorway with her pretty smile and outstretched hand. Miss Pringle kissed her warmly and then drew her down on a large sofa by her side. Her glance had a certain note of disapproval as it took in her friend's black dress, which did not escape that observant young person.

"I was so glad to hear you were coming to me this afternoon; it is good of you. How did you escape the dragon?"

She had long ago nicknamed the excellent Mrs. Hubbard 'the dragon' simply to tease Miss Pringle.

"Mrs. Hubbard has gone for a drive with somebody or other and didn't want me," said Miss Pringle primly. "You haven't been crying, Nora?"

"Yes, I couldn't help it. My dear, it's not unnatural."

Miss Pringle dropped the hand she had been stroking to clasp both her own over the handle of her umbrella. "Well, I don't like to say anything against her now she's dead, poor thing, but Miss Wickham was the most detestable old woman I ever met."

"Still," said Nora slowly, looking toward the French window which opened on the garden, at the sun streaming through the drawn blinds, "I don't suppose one can live so long with anyone and not be a little sorry to part with them forever. I was Miss Wickham's companion for ten years."

"How you stood it! Exacting, domineering, disagreeable!"

"Yes, I suppose she was. Because she paid me a salary, she thought I wasn't a human being. I certainly never knew anyone with such a bitter tongue. At first I used to cry every night when I went to bed because of the things she said to me. But I got used to them."

"I wonder you didn't leave her. I would have." Miss Pringle attempting to delude herself with the idea that she was a mettlesome, high-spirited person who would stand no nonsense, was immensely diverting to Nora. To hide an irrepressible smile, she went over to a bowl of roses which stood on one of the little tables and pretended to busy herself with their rearrangement.

"Posts as lady's companions are not so easy to find, I fancy. At least I remember that when I got this one I was thought to be extremely lucky not to have to wait twice as long. I don't imagine things have bettered much in our line, do you?"

"That they have not," rejoined Miss Pringle gloomily. "They tell me the agents' books are full of people wanting situations. Before I went to Mrs. Hubbard I was out of one for nearly two years." Her voice shook a little at the recollection. Her poor, tired, weather-beaten face quivered as if she were about to cry.

"It's not so had for you," said Nora soothingly. "You can always go and stay with your brother."

"You've a brother, too."

"Ah, yes. But he's farming in Canada. He has all he could do to keep himself. He couldn't keep me, too."

"How is he doing now?" asked Miss Pringle, to whom any new topic of conversation was of interest. She had so little opportunity for conversation at the irreproachable Mrs. Hubbard's, that lady having apparently inherited a limited set of ideas from her late husband, 'as Mr. Hubbard used to say' being her favorite introduction to any topic. Miss Pringle saw herself making quite a little success at dinner that night--there was to be a guest, she believed--by saying: "A friend of mine has just been telling me of the success her brother is having way out in Canada." "He is getting on?" she asked encouragingly.

"Oh, he's doing very well. He's got a farm of his own. He wrote over a few years ago and told me he could always give me a home if I wanted one."

"Canada's so far off," observed Miss Pringle deprecatingly. Her tone seemed to imply that there were other disadvantages which she would refrain from mentioning.

Now while Nora had always had the same vague feeling that Canada, in addition to being an immense distance off, was not quite, well, it wasn't England--that was indisputable--she found herself unreasonably irritated by her friend's tone.

"Not when yon get there," she replied sharply.

Miss Pringle evidently deemed it best to change the subject. "Why don't you draw the blinds?" she asked after a moment.

"It is horrid, isn't it? But somehow I thought I ought to wait till they came back from the funeral. But just see the sunlight; it must be beautiful out of doors. Why don't we walk about in the garden? Do you care for a wrap? I'll send Kate to fetch you something, if you do."

Miss Pringle having decided that her coat was sufficiently warm if they did not sit anywhere too long and just walked in the paths where it was sure not to be damp, they went out of the gloomy drawing-room into the bright afternoon sunshine.

"Don't you love a garden when things are just beginning to show their heads? I sometimes think that spring is the most beautiful of all the seasons. It's like watching the birth of a new world. I think the most human thing about poor Miss Wickham was her fondness for flowers. She always said she hoped she'd never die in winter."

To Miss Pringle, the note of regret which crept now and again into Nora's voice when she spoke of her late employer was a continual source of bewilderment. Here was a woman who she knew had a quick temper and a passionate nature speaking as if she actually sorrowed for the tyrant who had so frequently made her life unbearable. She was sure that she couldn't have felt more grieved if Providence had seen fit to remove the excellent Mrs. Hubbard from the scene of her earthly activities. Poor Miss Pringle! She did not realize that after thirty years of a life passed as a hired companion that she no longer possessed either sensibility or the power of affection. To her, one employer would be very like another so long as they were fairly considerate and not too unreasonable. It would be tiresome, to be sure, to have to learn the little likes and dislikes of Mrs. Hubbard's successor. But what would you? Life was filled with tiresome moments. Poor Miss Pringle!

Her next remark was partly to make conversation and partly because she might obtain further light upon this perplexing subject. She made a mental note that she must not forget to speak to Mrs. Hubbard of Nora's grief over Miss Wickham's death. Naturally, she would be gratified.

"Well, it must be a great relief to you now it's all over," she said.

"Sometimes I can't realize it," said Nora simply. "These last few weeks I hardly got to bed at all, and when the end came I was utterly exhausted. For two days I have done nothing but sleep. Poor Miss Wickham. She did hate dying."

Miss Pringle had a sort of triumph. She had proved her point. Even Mrs. Hubbard could not doubt it now! "That's the extraordinary part of it. I believe you were really fond of her."

"Do you know that for nearly a year she would eat nothing but what I gave her with my own hands. And she liked me as much as she was capable of liking anybody."

"That wasn't much," Miss Pringle permitted herself.

"And then I was so dreadfully sorry for her."

"Good heavens!"

"She'd been a hard and selfish woman all her life, and there was no one who cared for her," Nora went on passionately. "It seemed so dreadful to die like that and leave not a soul to regret one. Her nephew and his wife were just waiting for her death. It was dreadful. Each time they came down from London I could see them looking at her to see if she was any worse than when last they'd seen her."

"Well," said Miss Pringle with a sort of splendid defiance, "I thought her a horrid old woman, and I'm glad she's dead. And I only hope she's left you well provided for."

"Oh, I think she's done that," Nora smiled happily into her friend's face. "Yes, I can be quite sure of that, I fancy. Two years ago, when I--when I nearly went away, she said she'd left me enough to live on."

They walked on for a moment or two in silence until they had reached the end of the path, where there was a little arbor in which Miss Wickham had been in the habit of having her tea afternoons when the weather permitted.

"Do you think we would run any risk if we sat down here a few moments? Suppose we try it. We can walk again if you feel in the least chilled. I think the view so lovely from here. Besides, I can see the carriage the moment it enters the gate."

Miss Pringle sat down with the air of a person who was hardly conscious of what she was doing.

"You say she told you she had left you something when you nearly went away," she went on in the hesitating manner of one who has been interrupted while reading aloud and is not quite sure that she has resumed at the right place. "You mean when that assistant of Dr. Evans wanted to marry you? I'm glad you wouldn't have him."

"He was very kind and--and nice," said Nora gently. "But, of course, he wasn't a gentleman."

"I shouldn't like to live with a man at all," retorted Miss Pringle, with unshakable conviction. "I think they're horrid; but of course it would be utterly impossible if he weren't a gentleman."

Nora's eyes twinkled with amusement; she gave a little gurgle of laughter. "He came to see Miss Wickham, but she wouldn't have anything to do with him. First, she said she couldn't spare me, and then she said that I had a very bad temper."

"I like _her_ saying that," retorted her listener.

"It's quite true," said Nora with a deprecating wave of her hand. "Every now and then I felt I couldn't put up with her any more. I forgot that I was dependent on her, and that if she dismissed me, I probably shouldn't be able to find another situation, and I just flew at her. I must say she was very nice about it; she used to look at me and grin, and when it was all over, say: 'My dear, when you marry, if your husband's a wise man, he'll use a big stick now and then.'"

"Old cat!"

"I should like to see any man try it," said Nora with emphasis.

Miss Pringle dismissed the supposition with a wave of her hand. "How much do you think she's left you?" she asked eagerly.

"Well, of course I don't know; the will is going to be read this afternoon, when they come back from the funeral. But from what she said, I believe about two hundred and fifty pounds a year."

"It's the least she could do. She's had the ten best years of your life." Nora gave a long, happy sigh. "Just think of it! Never to be at anybody's beck and call again. I shall be able to get up when I like and go to bed when I like, go out when I choose and come in when I choose. Think of what that means!"

"Unless you marry--you probably will," said Miss Pringle in a discouraging tone.

"Never."

"What do you purpose doing?"

"I shall go to Italy, Florence, Rome; oh, everywhere I've so longed to go. Do you think it's horrible of me? I'm so happy!"

"My dear child!" said Miss Pringle with real feeling.

At that moment the sound of carriage wheels came to them. Turning quickly, Nora saw the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Wickham coming up the drive. "There they are now. How the time has gone!"

"I'd better go, hadn't I?" said Miss Pringle with manifest reluctance.

"I'm afraid you must: I'm sorry."

"Couldn't I go up to your room and wait there? I do so want to know about the will."

Nora hesitated a moment. She didn't want to take Miss Pringle up to her bare little room. A sort of loyalty to the woman who was, after all, to be her benefactress--for was she not, after all, with her legacy, going to make the happy future pay rich interest for the unhappy past?--made her reluctant to let anyone know how poorly she had been lodged.

"No," she said; "I'll tell you what, stay here in the garden. They want to catch the four-something back to London. And, later, we can have a cozy little tea all by ourselves."

"Very well. Oh, my dear," said Miss Pringle with emotion, "I'm so sincerely happy in your good luck!"

Nora was genuinely moved. She leaned over and kissed Miss Pringle, her eyes filling with quick tears.

Then she went into the house. The Wickhams were already in the drawing-room. Mrs. James Wickham was a pretty young woman, a good ten years younger than her unattractive husband. Of the two, Nora preferred Mr. Wickham. There was a certain cynicism about her insincerity which his, somehow, lacked. Even now, they wore their rue with a difference.

Mrs. Wickham's mourning was as correct and elegant as a fashionable dressmaker could make it; the very latest thing in grief. Mr. Wickham was far less sumptuous. Beyond the customary band on his hat and a pair of black gloves conspicuously new, he had apparently made little expenditure on his costume. As Nora entered, Mrs. Wickham was pulling off her gloves.

"How do yon do?" she said carelessly. "Ouf! Do put the blinds up, Miss Marsh. Really, we needn't be depressed any more. Jim, if you love me, take those gloves off. They're perfectly revolting."

"Why, what's wrong with them! The fellow in the shop told me they were the right thing."

"No doubt; I never saw anyone look quite so funereal as you do."

"Well," retorted her husband, "you didn't want me to get myself up as if I were going to a wedding, did you?"

"Were there many people?" said Nora hastily.

The insolence of Mrs. Wickham's glance was scarcely veiled.

"Oh, quite a lot," she drawled. "The sort of people who indulge in other peoples' funerals as a mild form of dissipation."

"I hope Wynne will look sharp," said her husband hastily, looking at his watch. "I don't want to miss that train."

"Who were all those stodgy old things who wrung your hand afterwards, Jim?" asked his wife. She was moving slowly about the room picking up the various little objects scattered about and examining the contents of one of the cabinets with the air of an appraiser.

"I can't think. They did make me feel such a fool."

"Oh, was that it?" laughed his wife. "I saw you looking a perfect owl and I thought you were giving a very bad imitation of restrained emotion."

"Dorothy!" in a tone of remonstrance.

"Would you care for some tea, Mrs. Wickham?" Nora broke in. To her the whole scene was positively indecent. She longed to make her escape, but felt that it would be considered part of her duty to remain as long as the Wickhams stayed. As she was about to ring the bell, Mrs. Wickham stopped her with a gesture.

"Well, you might send some in so that it'll be ready when Mr. Wynne comes. We'll ring for you, shall we?" she added. "I dare say you've got one or two things you want to do now."

"Very good, Mrs. Wickham."

Nora could feel her cheeks burn as she left the room. But she was thankful to escape. Outside the door she hesitated for a moment. There was no good in rejoining Miss Pringle as yet. She had no news for her. She hoped Mr. Wynne would not be delayed much longer. The Wickhams could not possibly be more anxious to get back to London than she was to have them go. How gratuitously insolent that woman was. Thank Heaven, she need never see her again after to-day. Of course, she was furious because she suspected that the despised companion was to be a beneficiary under the will. How could anyone be so mean as to begrudge her her well-earned share in so large a fortune! Well, the coming hour would tell the tale.

On the table in her room was the letter to her brother which she had forgotten to send to the post. Slipping down the stairs again, she went in search of Kate to see if it were too late to send it to the village. Now that it was written, she had almost a superstitions feeling that it was important that it should catch the first foreign mail.

As she passed the door of the drawing-room, she could hear James Wickham's voice raised above its normal pitch. Were they already quarreling over the spoils!

CHAPTER III

Nora's surmise had been very nearly correct; the Wickhams were quarreling, but not, as yet, over the spoils. James Wickham had waited until the door had closed behind his aunt's companion to rebuke his wife's untimely frivolity.

"I say, Dorothy, you oughtn't to be facetious before Miss Marsh. She was extremely attached to Aunt Louisa."

"Oh, what nonsense!" jeered Mrs. Wickham, throwing herself pettishly into a chair. "I find it's always a very good rule to judge people by oneself, and I'm positive she was just longing for the old lady to die."

"She was awfully upset at the end, you know that yourself."

"Nerves! Men are so idiotic. They never understand that there are tears _and_ tears. I cried myself, and Heaven knows I didn't regret her death."

"My dear Dorothy, you oughtn't to say that."

"Why not?" retorted his wife. "It's perfectly true. Aunt Louisa was a detestable person and no one would have stood her for a minute if she hadn't had money. I can't see the use of being a hypocrite _now_ that it can't make any difference either way. Oh, why doesn't that man hurry up!" She resumed once more her impatient walk about the room.

"I wish Wynne would come," said her husband, glad to change the subject, particularly as he felt that he had failed to be very impressive. "It'll be beastly inconvenient if we miss that train," he finished, glancing again at his watch.

"And another thing," said Mrs. Wickham, turning sharply as she reached the end of the room, "I don't trust that Miss Marsh. She looks as if she knew what was in the will."

"I don't for a moment suppose she does. Aunt Louisa wasn't the sort of person to talk."

"Nevertheless, I'm sure she knows she's been left something."

"Oh, well, I think she has the right to expect that. Aunt Louisa led her a dog's life."

Mrs. Wickham made an angry gesture. "She had her wages and a comfortable home. If she didn't like the place, she could have left it," she said pettishly. "After all," she went on in a quieter tone, "it's family money. In my opinion, Aunt Louisa had no right to leave it to strangers."

"I don't think we ought to complain if Miss Marsh gets a small annuity," said her husband soothingly. "I understand Aunt Louisa promised her something of the sort when she had a chance of marrying a couple of years ago."

"Miss Marsh is still quite young. It isn't as if she had been here for thirty years," protested Mrs. Wickham.

"Well, anyway, I've got an idea that Aunt Louisa meant to leave her about two hundred and fifty a year."

"Two hundred and fif---- But what's the estate amount to; have you any idea?"

"About nineteen thousand pounds, I believe."

Mrs. Wickham, who had seated herself once more, struck her hands violently together.

"Oh, it's absurd. It's a most unfair proposition. It will make _all_ the difference to us. On that extra two hundred and fifty a year we could keep a car."

"My dear, be thankful if we get anything at all," said her husband solemnly. For a moment she stared at him aghast.

"Jim! Jim, you don't think---- Oh! that would be too horrible."

"Hush! Take care."

He crossed to the window as the door opened and Kate came in softly with the tea things.

"How lucky it is that we had a fine day," he said, endeavoring to give the impression that they had been talking with becoming sobriety of light topics. He hoped his wife's raised voice had not been heard in the passageway.

But Mrs. Wickham was beyond caring. Her toneless "Yes" in response to his original observation betrayed her utter lack of interest in the subject. But as Kate was still busy setting out the things on a small table, he continued his efforts. Really, Dorothy should 'play up' more.

"It looks as if we were going to have a spell of fine weather."

"Yes."

"It's funny how often it rains for weddings."

"Very funny."

"The tea is ready, sir."

As Kate left the room, Mrs. Wickham crossed slowly over to where her husband was standing in front of the window leading to the garden. Her voice shook with emotion. It was evident that she was very near tears. He put his arm around her awkwardly, but with a certain suggestion of protective tenderness.

"I've been counting on that money for years," she said, hardly above a whisper. "I used to dream at night that I was reading a telegram with the news of Aunt Louisa's death. And I've thought of all we should be able to do when we get it. It'll make such a difference."

"You know what she was. She didn't care twopence for us. We ought to be prepared for the worst," he said soberly.

"Do you think she could have left everything to Miss Marsh?"

"I shouldn't be greatly surprised."

"We'll dispute the will," she said, once more raising her voice. "It's undue influence. I suspected Miss Marsh from the beginning. I hate her. Oh, how I hate her! Oh, why doesn't Wynne come?"

A ring at the bell answered her.

"Here he is, I expect."

"The suspense is too awful."

"Pull yourself together, old girl," said Wickham, patting his wife encouragingly on the shoulder. "And I say, look a bit dismal. After all, we've just come from a funeral."

Mrs. Wickham gave a sort of suppressed wail. "Oh, I'm downhearted enough, Heaven knows."

"Mr. Wynne, sir," said Kate from the doorway.

Mr. Wynne, the late Miss Wickham's solicitor, was a jovial, hearty man, tallish, bald and ruddy-looking. In his spare time he played at being a country gentleman. He had a fine, straightforward eye and a direct manner that inspired one with confidence. He was dressed in complimentary mourning, but for the moment his natural hearty manner threatened to get the better of him.

"Helloa," he said, holding out his hand to Wickham. But the sight of Mrs. Wickham, seated on the sofa dejectedly enough, recalled to him that he should be more subdued in the presence of such genuine grief. He crossed the room to take Dorothy's hand solemnly.

"I didn't have an opportunity of shaking hands with you at the cemetery."

"How do you do," she said rather absently.

"Pray accept my sincerest sympathy on your great bereavement."

Mrs. Wickham made an effort to bring her mind back from the all-absorbing fear that possessed her.

"Of course the end was not entirely unexpected."

"No, I know. But it must have been a great shock, all the same."

He was going on to say what a wonderful old lady his late client had been in that her faculties seemed perfectly unimpaired until the very last, when Wickham interrupted him. Not only was he most anxious to hear the will read himself and have it over, but he saw signs in his wife's face and in the nervous manner in which she rolled and unrolled her handkerchief, that she was nearing the end of her self-control, never very great.

"My wife was very much upset, but of course my poor aunt had suffered great pain, and we couldn't help looking upon it as a happy release."

"Naturally," responded the solicitor sympathetically. "And how is Miss Marsh?" He was looking at James Wickham as he spoke, so that he missed the sudden 'I told you so' glance which Mrs. Wickham flashed at her husband.

"Oh, she's very well," she managed to say with a careless air.

"I'm glad to learn that she is not completely prostrated," said Mr. Wynne warmly. "Her devotion to Miss Wickham was perfectly wonderful. Dr. Evans--he's my brother-in-law, you know--told me no trained nurse could have been more competent. She was like a daughter to Miss Wickham."

"I suppose we'd better send for her," said Mrs. Wickham coldly.

"Have you brought the----" Wickham stopped in embarrassment.

"Yes, I have it in my pocket," said the solicitor quickly. He had noted before now how awkward people always were about speaking of wills. There was nothing indelicate about doing so. Heavens, all right-minded persons made their wills and they meant to have them read after they were dead. Everybody knew that, and yet they always acted as if it were indecent to approach the subject. He had no patience with such nonsense.

With an eloquent look at her husband, Mrs. Wickham slowly crossed the room to the bell.

"I'll ring for Miss Marsh," she said in a hard voice.

"I expect Mr. Wynne would like a cup of tea, Dorothy."

She frowned at her husband behind the solicitor's broad back. More delays. Could she bear it? "Oh, I'm so sorry, I quite forgot about it."

"No, thank you very much, I never take tea," protested that gentleman. He took from his pocket a long blue envelope and slowly drew from it the will, which he smoothed out with a deliberation which was maddening to Mrs. Wickham. She could hardly tear her fascinated eyes away from it long enough to tell the waiting Kate to ask Miss Marsh to be good enough to come to them.

"What's the time, Jim?" she asked nervously.

"Oh, there's no hurry," he said, looking at his watch without seeing it. Then turning to Wynne, he added: "We've got an important engagement this evening in London and we're very anxious not to miss the fast train."

"The train service down here is rotten," said Mrs. Wickham harshly.

"That's all right. The will is very short. It won't take me two minutes to read it," Mr. Wynne reassured them.

"What on earth is Miss Marsh doing?" said Mrs. Wickham, half to herself. An endless minute passed.

"How pretty the garden is looking now," said the solicitor cheerfully, gazing out through the window.

"Very," Wickham managed to say.

"Miss Wickham was always so interested in her garden."

"Yes."

"My own tulips aren't so advanced as those."

"Aren't they?" Wickham's tone suggested irritation.

Mr. Wynne addressed his next observation to Mrs. Wickham.

"Are you interested in gardening?"

"No, I hate it. At last!"

The exclamation was called forth by the appearance of Nora in the doorway. The two men both, rose; Wynne to go forward and shake Nora's hand with unaffected cordiality, Wickham to whisper in his wife's ear, beseeching her to exercise more self-control.

"How do you do, Miss Marsh? I'm rejoiced to see you looking so fit."

"Oh, I'm very well, thank you. How do you do?"

"Will you have a cup of tea?" asked Wickham in response to what he thought was a signal from his wife.

But Mrs. Wickham had reached the point where further waiting was simply impossible.

"Jim," she remonstrated, "Miss Marsh would much prefer to have tea quietly after we're gone."

Nora understood and for the moment found it in her heart to be sorry for the woman, much as she disliked her.

"I won't have any tea, thank you," she said simply.

"Mr. Wynne has brought the will with him," explained Mrs. Wickham. Her tone was almost appealing as if she begged Nora if she knew of its contents to say so without further delay.

"Oh, yes?"

Nothing should induce her to show such agitation as this woman did. She managed to assume an air of polite interest and find a chair for herself quite calmly. And yet she was conscious that her heart was beating wildly beneath her bodice. But she would not betray herself, she would not. And yet her stake was as great as any. Her whole future hung on the contents of that paper Mr. Wynne was caressing with his long fingers.

"Miss Marsh," questioned Mr. Wynne as soon as she was seated, "so far as you know there is no other will?"

"How do you mean?"

"Miss Wickham didn't make a later one--without my assistance, I mean? You know of nothing in the house, for instance?"

"Oh, no," said Nora positively. "Miss Wickham always said you had her will. She was extremely methodical."

"I feel I ought to ask you," the solicitor went on with unwonted gentleness, "because Miss Wickham consulted me a couple of years ago about making a new will. She told me what she wanted to do, but gave me no actual instructions to draw it. I thought perhaps she might have done it herself."

"I heard nothing about it. I am sure that her only will is in your hands."

"Then I think that we may take it that this----"

Mrs. Wickham's set face relaxed. The light of triumph was in her eyes. She understood.

"When was that will made?" she asked eagerly.

"Eight or nine years ago. The exact date was March 4th, 1904."

The date settled it. Nora, too, realized that. She was left penniless. What a refinement of cruelty to deceive--but she must not think of that now. She would have all the rest of her life in which to think of it. But here before that woman, whose searching glance was even now fastened on her face to see how she was taking the blow, she would give no sign.

"When did you first come to Miss Wickham?" Mrs. Wickham's voice was almost a caress.

"At the end of nineteen hundred and three." There was no trace of emotion in that clear voice. After a moment Mr. Wynne spoke again.

"Shall _I_ read it, or would you just like to know the particulars? It is very short."

"Oh, let us know just roughly." Mrs. Wickham was still eager.

"Well, Miss Wickham left one hundred pounds to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and one hundred pounds to the General Hospital at Tunbridge Wells, and the entire residue of her fortune to her nephew, Mr. James Wickham."

Mrs. Wickham drew her breath sharply. Once more she looked at her late aunt's companion, but nothing was to be read in that calm face. She was a designing minx, none the less. But she did yield her a grudging admiration, for her self-control in the shipwreck of all her hopes. Now they could have their car. Oh, what couldn't they have! She felt she had earned every penny of it in that last dreadful half hour.

"And Miss Marsh?" she heard her husband ask.

"Miss Marsh is not mentioned."

Somehow, Nora managed a smile. "I could hardly expect to be. At the time that will was drawn I had been Miss Wickham's companion for only a few months."

"That is why I asked whether you knew of any later will," said Mr. Wynne almost sadly. "When I talked to Miss Wickham on the subject she said her wish was to make adequate provision for you after her death. I think she had spoken to you about it."

"Yes, she had."

"She mentioned three hundred a year."

"That was very kind of her." Nora's voice broke a little. "I'm glad she wished to do something for me."

"Oddly enough," continued the solicitor, "she spoke about it to Dr. Evans only a few days before she died."

"Perhaps there is a later will somewhere," said Wickham.

"I honestly don't think so."

"Oh, I'm sure there isn't," affirmed Nora.

"Dr. Evans was talking to Miss Wickham about Miss Marsh. She was completely tired out and he wanted Miss Wickham to have a professional nurse. She told him then that I _had_ the will and that she had left Miss Marsh amply provided for."

"That isn't legal, of course," said Mrs. Wickham decidedly.

"What isn't?"

"I mean no one could force us--I mean the will stands as it is, doesn't it?"

"Certainly it does."

"I'm afraid it's a great disappointment to you, Miss Marsh," Wickham said, not unkindly.

"I never count my chickens before they're hatched." This time Nora smiled easily and naturally. The worst was over now.

"It would be very natural if Miss Marsh were disappointed in the circumstances. I think she'd been led to expect----" Mr. Wynne's voice was almost pleading.

Mrs. Wickham detected a certain disapproval in the tone. She hastened to justify herself. He might still be useful. When the estate was once settled, they would of course put everything in the hands of their London solicitor. But it would be better not to antagonize him for the moment.

"Our aunt left a very small fortune, I understand, and I suppose she felt it wouldn't be fair to leave a large part of it away from her own family."

"Of course," said her husband, following her lead, "it is family money. She inherited it from my grandfather, and--but I want you to know, Miss Marsh, that my wife and I thoroughly appreciate all you did for my aunt. Money couldn't repay your care and devotion You've been perfectly wonderful."

"It's extremely good of you to say so."

"I think everyone who saw Miss Marsh with Miss Wickham must be aware that during the ten years she was with her she never spared herself." Mr. Wynne's eyes were on Mrs. Wickham.

"Of course my aunt was a very trying woman----" began James Wickham feebly. His wife headed him off.

"Earning one's living is always unpleasant; if it weren't there'd be no incentive to work."

This astonishing aphorism was almost too much for Nora's composure. She gave Mrs. Wickham an amused glance, to which that lady responded by beaming upon her in her most agreeable manner.

"My wife and I would be very glad to make some kind of acknowledgment of your services."

"I was just going to mention it," echoed Mrs. Wickham heartily.

Mr. Wynne's kindly face brightened visibly. He was glad they were going to do the right thing, after all. He had been a little fearful a few moments before. "I felt sure that in the circumstances----"

But Mrs. Wickham interrupted him quickly.

"What were your wages, may I ask, Miss Marsh?"

"Thirty pounds a year."

"Really?" in a tone of excessive surprise. "Many ladies are glad to go as companion without any salary, just for the sake of a home and congenial society. I daresay you've been able to save a good deal in all these years."

"I had to dress myself decently, Mrs. Wickham," said Nora frigidly.

Mrs. Wickham was graciousness itself. "Well, I'm sure my husband will be very glad to give you a year's salary, won't you, Jim?"

"It's very kind of you," replied Nora coldly, "but I'm not inclined to accept anything but what is legally due to me."

"You must remember," went on Mrs. Wickham, "that there'll be very heavy death duties to pay. They'll swallow up the income from Miss Wickham's estate for at least two years, won't they, Mr. Wynne?"

"I quite understand," said Nora.

"Perhaps you'll change your mind."

"I don't think so."

There was an awkward pause. Mr. Wynne rose from his seat at the table. His manner showed unmistakably that he was not impressed by Mrs. Wickham's great generosity.

"Well, I think I must leave you," he said, looking at Nora. "Good-by, Miss Marsh. If I can be of any help to you I hope you'll let me know."

"That's very kind of you."

Bowing slightly to Mrs. Wickham and nodding to her husband, he went out.

"We must go, too, Dorothy," said James uneasily.

Mrs. Wickham began drawing on her gloves. "Jim will be writing to you in a day or two. You know how grateful we both are for all you did for our poor aunt. We shall be glad to give you the very highest references. You're such a wonderful nurse. I'm sure you'll have no difficulty in getting another situation; I expect I can find you something myself. I'll ask among all my friends."

Nora made no reply to this affable speech.

"Come on, Dorothy; we really haven't any time to lose," said Wickham hurriedly.

"Good-by, Miss Marsh."

"Good-by," said Nora dully. She stood, her hands resting on the table, her eyes fastened on the long blue envelope which Mr. Wynne had forgotten. From a long way off she heard the wheels of the cab on the driveway.

CHAPTER IV

"I thought they were never going. Well?"

It was Miss Pringle who had come in from her retreat in the garden, eager to hear the news the moment she had seen the Wickhams driving away. Nora turned and looked at her without a word.

Miss Pringle was genuinely startled at the drawn look on her face.

"Nora! What's the matter? Isn't it as much as you thought?"

"Miss Wickham has left me nothing," said Nora in a dead voice.

Miss Pringle gave a positive wail of anguish. "Oh-h-h-h."

"Not a penny. Oh, it's cruel!" the girl said, almost wildly. "After all," she went on bitterly, "there was no need for her to leave me anything. She gave me board and lodging and thirty pounds a year. If I stayed it was because I chose. But she needn't have promised me anything. She needn't have prevented me from marrying."

"My dear, you could never have married that little assistant. He wasn't a gentleman," Miss Pringle reminded her.

"Ten years! The ten best years of a woman's life, when other girls are enjoying themselves. And what did I get for it? Board and lodging and thirty pounds a year. A cook does better than that."

"We can't expect to make as much money as a good cook," said Miss Pringle, with touching and unconscious pathos. "One has to pay something for living like a lady among people of one's own class."

"Oh, it's cruel!" Nora could only repeat.

"My dear," said Miss Pringle with an effort at consolation, "don't give way. I'm sure you'll have no difficulty in finding another situation. You wash lace beautifully and no one can arrange flowers like you."

Nora sank wearily into a chair. "And I was dreaming of France and Italy--I shall spend ten years more with an old lady, and then she'll die and I shall look out for another situation. It won't be so easy then because I shan't be so young. And so it'll go on until I can't find a situation because I'm too old, and then some charitable people will get me into a home. You like the life, don't you?"

"My dear, there are so few things a gentlewoman can do."

"When I think of those ten years," said Nora, pacing up and down the length of the room, "having to put up with every unreasonableness! Never being allowed to feel ill or tired. No servant would have stood what I have. The humiliation I've endured!"

"You're tired and out of sorts," said Miss Pringle soothingly. "Everyone isn't so trying as Miss Wickham. I'm sure Mrs. Hubbard has been kindness itself to me."

"Considering."

"I don't know what you mean by 'considering.'"

"Considering that she's rich and you're poor. She gives you her old clothes. She frequently doesn't ask you to have dinner by yourself when she's giving a party. She doesn't remind you that you're a dependent unless she's very much put out. But you--you've had thirty years of it. You've eaten the bitter bread of slavery till--till it tastes like plum cake!"

Miss Pringle was distinctly hurt. "I don't know why you say such things to me, Nora."

"Oh, you mustn't mind what I say; I----"

"Mr. Hornby would like to see you for a minute, Miss," said Kate from the doorway.

"Now?"

"I told him I didn't think it would be very convenient, Miss, but he says it's very important, and he won't detain you more than five minutes."

"What a nuisance. Ask him to come in."

"Very good, Miss."

"I wonder what on earth he can want."

"Who is he, Nora?"

"Oh, he's the son of Colonel Hornby. Don't you know, he lives at the top of Molyneux Park? His mother was a great friend of Miss Wickham's. He comes down here now and then for week-ends. He's got something to do with motor cars."

"Mr. Hornby," said Kate from the door.

Reginald Hornby was evidently one of those candid souls who are above simulating an emotion they do not feel. He had regarded the late Miss Wickham as an unusually tiresome old woman. His mother had liked her of course. But he could hardly have been expected to do so. Moreover, he had a shrewd notion that she must have been a perfect Tartar to live with. Miss Marsh might be busy or tired out with the ordeal of the day, but as she also might be leaving almost immediately and he wanted to see her, he had not hesitated to come, once he was sure that the Wickham relatives had departed. That he would find the late Miss Wickham's companion indulging in any show of grief for her late employer, had never entered his head.

He was a good-looking, if rather vacuous, young man with a long, elegant body. His dark, sleek hair was always carefully brushed and his small mustache trimmed and curled. His beautiful clothes suggested the fashionable tailors of Savile Row. Everything about him--his tie, his handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket, his boots--bore the stamp of the very latest thing.

"I say, I'm awfully sorry to blow in like this," he said airily.

He beamed on Nora, whom he had always regarded as much too pretty a girl to be what he secretly called a 'frozy companion' and sent a quick inquiring glance at Miss Pringle, whom he vaguely remembered to have seen somewhere in Tunbridge Wells. But then Tunbridge Wells was filled with frumps. Oh, yes. He remembered now. She was usually to be seen leading a pair of Poms on a leash.

"You see, I didn't know if you'd be staying on here," he went on, retaining Nora's hand, "and I wanted to catch you. I'm off in a day or two myself."

"Won't you sit down? Mr. Hornby--Miss Pringle."

"How d'you do?"

Mr. Hornby's glance skimmed lightly over Miss Pringle's surface and returned at once to Nora's more pleasing face.

"Everything go off O. K.?" he inquired genially.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Funeral, I mean. Mother went. Regular outing for her."

Miss Pringle stiffened visibly in her chair and began to study the pattern in the rug at her feet with an absorbed interest. Nora was conscious of a wild desire to laugh, but with a heroic effort succeeded in keeping her face straight out of deference to her elderly friend.

"Really?" she said, in a faint voice.

"Oh, yes," went on young Hornby with unabated cheerfulness. "You see, mother's getting on. I'm the child of her old age--Benjamin, don't you know. Benjamin and Sarah, you know," he explained, apparently for the benefit of Miss Pringle, as he pointedly turned to address this final remark to her.

"I understand perfectly," said Miss Pringle icily, "but it wasn't Sarah."

"Wasn't it? When one of her old friends dies," he went on to Nora, "mother always goes to the funeral and says to herself: 'Well, I've seen _her_ out, anyhow!' Then she comes back and eats muffins for tea. She always eats muffins after she's been to a funeral."

"The maid said you wanted to see me about something in particular," Nora gently reminded him.

"That's right, I was forgetting."

He wheeled suddenly once more on Miss Pringle, who had arrived at that stage in her study of the rug when she was carefully tracing out the pattern with the point of her umbrella.

"If Sarah wasn't Benjamin's mother, whose mother was she?"

"If you want to know, I recommend you to read your Bible," retorted that lady with something approaching heat.

Mr. Hornby slapped his knee. "I thought it was a stumper," he remarked with evident satisfaction.

"The fact is, I'm going to Canada and mother told me you had a brother or something out there."

"A brother, not a something," said Nora, with a smile.

"And she said, perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me a letter to him."

"I will with pleasure. But I'm afraid he won't be much use to you. He's a farmer and he lives miles away from anywhere."

"But I'm going in for farming."

"You are? What on earth for?"

"I've jolly well got to do something," said Hornby with momentary gloom, "and I think farming's about the best thing I can do. One gets a lot of shooting and riding yon know. And then there are tennis parties and dances. And you make a pot of money, there's no doubt about that."

"But I thought you were in some motor business in London."

"Well, I was, in a way. But--I thought you'd have heard about it. Mother's been telling everybody. Governor won't speak to me. Altogether, things are rotten. I want to get out of this beastly country as quick as I can."

"Would you like me to give you the letter at once?" said Nora, going over to an escritoire that stood near the window.

"I wish you would. Fact is," he went on, addressing no one in particular, as Nora was already deep in her letter and Miss Pringle, having exhausted the possibilities of the rug, was gazing stonily into space, "I'm broke. I was all right as long as I stuck to bridge; I used to make money on that. Over a thousand a year."

"What!"

Horror was stronger than Miss Pringle's resolution to take no further part in the conversation with this extraordinary and apparently unprincipled young man.

"Playing regularly, you know. If I hadn't been a fool I'd have stuck to that, but I got bitten with chemi."

"With what?" asked Nora, over her shoulder.

"Chemin de fer. Never heard of it? I got in the habit of going to Thornton's. I suppose you never heard of him either. He keeps a gambling hell. Gives you a slap-up supper for nothing, as much pop as you can drink, and cashes your checks like a bird. The result is, I've lost every bob I had and then Thornton sued me on a check I'd given him. The governor forked out, but he says I've got to go to Canada. I'm never going to gamble again, I can tell you that."

"Oh, well, that's something," murmured Nora cheerfully.

"You can't make money at chemi," went on Hornby, relapsing once more into gloom; "the _cagnotte's_ bound to clear you out in the end. When I come back I'm going to stick to bridge. There are always plenty of mugs about, and if you have a good head for cards, you can't help making an income out of it."

"But I thought you said you were never going----" began Miss Pringle, but, thinking better of it, abandoned her sentence in mid-air.

"Here is your letter," said Nora, holding it out to him.

"Thanks, awfully. I daresay I shan't want it, you know. I expect I shall get offered a job the moment I land, but there's no harm having it. I'll be getting along."

"Good-by, then, and good luck."

"Good-by," he said, shaking hands with Nora and Miss Pringle.

"Nora, why don't you go out to Canada?" said Miss Pringle thoughtfully, as soon as the door had closed after young Hornby. "Now your brother has a farm of his own, I should think----"

"My brother's married," interrupted Nora quickly. "He married four years ago."

"You never told me."

"I couldn't."

"Why? Isn't his wife--isn't his wife nice?"

"She was a waitress at a scrubby little hotel in Winnipeg."

"What _are_ you going to do then?"

"I? I'm going to look out for another situation."

Miss Pringle shook her head sadly.

"Well, I must be going. Mrs. Hubbard will be back from her drive by this time. She's sure to have you in for tea or something before you go. She's always been quite fond of you. At any rate, I'll see you again, of course."

"Oh, yes, indeed."

Nora was thankful to be alone once more. She wanted to think it all out. What a day it had been. Starting with such high hopes to end only in utter disaster. She felt completely exhausted by the emotions she had undergone. Time enough to plan to-morrow. To-night she needed rest.

Two days later, in the late afternoon, she found herself in the train for London, the second journey she had taken in ten years. Once, three years before, Miss Wickham had been persuaded to go up and pay the James Wickhams a short visit and had taken Nora with her.

It could hardly have been described as a pleasure trip. Miss Wickham detested visiting and had only yielded to her nephew's importunities because she had never been in his London house to stay any time and had an avid curiosity to see how they lived. She had of course disapproved of everything she saw about the establishment. But, as it was no part of her purpose to let the fact be known to her relatives, she had in a large measure vented her consequent ill-humor upon her unfortunate companion.

The last few days had seemed full, indeed. No matter how little one may really care for a place, the process of uprooting after ten years is not an easy one. Mr. Wynne had been to see her to renew his offer of assistance and counsel in any plan she might have for the future and she had spent an hour with the good doctor and his wife. The dreaded invitation from Mrs. Hubbard had duly arrived and had turned out to be for dinner, an extraordinary honor. Nora had accepted it entirely on Miss Pringle's account. Mrs. Hubbard had been condescension itself and had even gone the length of excusing Miss Pringle from the evening's game of bezique, in order that she might have a farewell chat with her friend.

She had mildly deprecated Miss Wickham's carelessness in not altering her will, but had reminded Miss Marsh that she should be grateful to her late employer for having had such kindly intentions toward her, vaguely ending her remarks with the statement that as her dear husband had always said in this imperfect world one had often to consider intentions.

It was from her more humble friends that Nora found it hardest to part. She had had tea with the gardener's wife and children of whom she was genuinely fond. But it was the parting from Kate that had brought the tears to her eyes. She had confided to that motherly soul how large she had loomed in the rosy plans she had made while she still had expectations from Miss Wickham, and been assured in turn that Kate couldn't have fancied herself happier than she would have been in looking after her, and the faithful Kate refused to regard the plan as anything more than postponed. It developed that she was an adept in telling fortunes with tea leaves. She hoped her dear Miss Marsh wouldn't consider it a liberty for her to say so, but in every forecast that Kate had made for herself in the last twelfth month, Miss Marsh had always been mixed up, which showed beyond the peradventure of a doubt that they were to meet again.

It was already dusk when London was reached, but Nora had an address of an inexpensive little private hotel which the doctor's wife had given her. She had written ahead to engage a room so that her mind was at ease on that subject. Not knowing exactly where the street might be, further than that it led off the Strand, she indulged herself in the novel luxury of a taxi and drove to her new lodgings in state.

"If it isn't too much out of the way, would you take me by way of Trafalgar Square, please."

The chauffeur touched his cap. His "Yes, Miss," was non-committal.

She was conscious of an unusual feeling of exaltation as she went along. London, while it can be one of the most depressing cities in the world when one is alone and friendless, quickens the imagination. As they went through Trafalgar Square and caught a fleeting glimpse of the National Gallery, Nora resolved that she would give herself a real treat and renew old acquaintance with that institution as well as see the Wallace collection and the Tate Gallery, both of which would be new to her. She realized more poignantly than ever how starved her love of beauty had been for the last ten years. It awoke in her afresh with the thought that for a few days, at least, she could permit herself the luxury of gratifying it.

She was shown to her room by a neat maid who said she would see what might be done in the way of a light tea. As a rule breakfast was the only repast that was supposed to be furnished. But she was quite sure Miss Horn, the proprietor, would, in view of the fact that the young lady was a stranger in London and would hardly know where to go alone for a bite of dinner, make an exception.

Nora thanked her and set about making the bare little room, which was quite at the top of the house, look a little more homelike by unpacking some of her own things. After all, she reflected, it wasn't much less cheerful than the room she had had for ten years. Perhaps her late participation in the splendors of Miss Wickham's guest chamber, which had been part of Dr. Evans' prescription, had spoiled her for simpler joys. She laughed aloud at the thought.

By the time she had had her supper, which was sufficiently good, and written a few notes--one to the doctor's wife to say that she thought she would be quite comfortable in her new quarters, and one to the head of the agency through which she had obtained her post with Miss Wickham--Nora found herself ready for bed.

The next day dawned bright and fine; one of those delightful spring days to which the great city occasionally treats you as if to protest against the injustice of her reputation for being dark and gloomy.

There were a number of pleasant looking people in the coffee room when Nora went down to breakfast, which turned out to be abundant and well cooked. Having inquired her direction--a sense of location was not one of her gifts--she set out gaily enough for a whole day of sightseeing. She might never get another position and have eventually to go out as a charwoman--the detail that she would be illy equipped for any such undertaking she humorously dismissed--but a day or two of unalloyed enjoyment she was going to have, come what might.

The day was a complete success. Having done several of the picture galleries, lunched and dined frugally at one of the A. B. C. restaurants, Nora returned at nightfall, tired but happy. Oh, the blessed freedom of it!

The next morning on coming down stairs she found at her plate a letter from the agency. The management of affairs, it seemed, had passed into other hands. Doubtless Miss Marsh's name would be found on the books of several years back, but it was not familiar to the new director. However, they would, of course, be pleased to put themselves at Miss Marsh's service. If she would be good enough to give them an early call, bringing any and all references she might have, etc., etc.

Miss Marsh tore the note into tiny fragments. The agency could wait, everything could wait, for the moment. She must have her fling, the first taste of freedom in all these years. After that----!

CHAPTER V

October had come. Nora was no longer in the comfortable little hotel to which the doctor's wife had sent her. Early in July she had thought it wiser to seek cheaper quarters where breakfast was not 'included.' Every penny must be counted now, and by combining breakfast and lunch late in the morning she found she could do quite well until night, besides saving an appreciable sum for the end of the week, when her room must be paid for.

The summer had been one long nightmare of heat. It had been years according to all accounts since the unhappy Londoners had so sweltered beneath the scorching rays of an almost tropic sun. Often, when tossing on her little bed or when seated by her small window which gave on a sort of court, with the forlorn hope of finding some air stirring, had she thought with longing of the pleasant garden at Tunbridge Wells and is perfumed breezes.

So far her search for any position had been fruitless. She had gone to other agencies; to some whose greatly reduced fees were a sure indication that she could hope for nothing so "high class," to use their hateful phrase, as she had been accustomed to. But one must do what one could.

At one establishment, she shuddered to remember, she found that she would be expected to sit in the office, as at the servants' agencies, to be inspected by prospective employers. This, Nora had flatly refused to do and had been coolly informed by the manager, an insufferable young man with a loud voice and a vulgar manner, that in that case he could do nothing for her.

He had at the same time refused to return her fee, which he had providently collected before explaining these conditions, on the ground that they never returned fees. Nora had been glad enough to make her escape from his hateful presence without arguing the matter with him, although she considered that, to all intents and purposes, her pocket had been picked.

Apparently everyone in the world was already supplied with a companion. She had thought of filing an application for the position of nursery governess, only to find that, for a really good post, two modern languages would be required. That, coupled with the fact that she was obliged to confess to absolutely no previous experience in teaching, closed the door to even second-class appointments.

And the desolating loneliness of it all! Only once in all this time had she seen anyone she knew, and that was shortly after her arrival while still in the first flush of her newly regained freedom. She had gone with a young woman who was staying at the hotel for a few days to the gallery of a theater. From her lofty perch she had seen Reggie Hornby with a gay party of young men in the stalls below. Evidently he was making the most of his last hours at home before going into exile.

Since leaving the hotel she had exchanged but few words with anyone beyond her landlady, the little slavey and the people at the various agencies. Once, it chanced that for several days in succession she had lunched at the same table in a dingy little restaurant with a fresh, pleasant-looking young girl, who had said 'Good morning' in such a friendly manner on their second encounter that Nora felt encouraged to begin conversation.

Her new acquaintance had the gift of a sympathetic manner and before Nora realized it she found herself relating the story of her failures and disappointments. Miss Hodson--so Nora discovered she was called from the very business-like card she had handed her at the beginning of the repast, with an air which for the moment relapsed from the sympathetic to the professional--had suggested when they had finished their lunch that, as she still had a quarter of an hour to spare, they might go and finish their chat in one of the little green oases abutting on the Embankment. Seated on one of the benches she proceeded to advise her companion to take up stenography and typewriting while she was still in funds.

"There are plenty of chances for a girl who knows her business and you're your own mistress and not at the beck and call of any old cat, who thinks she has bought you outright just because she's paying you starvation wages," she said with a finely independent air. Then in a thoroughly business-like way she went on to give the address of the school at which she had studied herself and had offered to take Nora there any evening the coming week.

In the end, to Nora's great pleasure, she had suggested joining forces for an outing on the coming Sunday. With a gesture that seemed to refer one to her card, she had explained that after typing all week in a stuffy office she always tried to have a Sunday out of doors to get her mind off her work. It was arranged that they should go somewhere together, leaving their destination to be decided when they met. They were to meet in front of the National Gallery at a quarter before ten. But, although poor Nora waited for over an hour, her friend did not turn up, and she had returned sadly to her dreary room. Neither of the girls had thought to exchange addresses. Beyond her name and occupation Miss Hodson's card vouchsafed nothing.

Nor had Nora ever seen her again, although she had returned several times to the restaurant where they had met. She had spent many of the long sleepless hours of the night in speculation as to what had become of her. She was sure that some accident had befallen her or she would have met her again. No one could be so cruel intentionally.

Once again in a tea room she had timidly ventured, prompted by sheer loneliness, to speak to an elderly woman with gray hair. It was a harmless little remark about some flowers in a vase on the counter. The woman had stared at her coldly for a moment before she said:

"I do not seem to recall where I have had the pleasure of seeing you before."

A flash of the old temper had crimsoned Nora's cheek, but she made no reply. Since then, aching as she was for a little human companionship, she had spoken to no one.

She had had two long letters from Miss Pringle, whose star seemed momentarily to be in the ascendant. Mrs. Hubbard had been ordered to the seaside; they were later to take a continental trip. There was even talk of consulting a famous and expensive specialist before returning to the calm of Tunbridge Wells. But prosperity had not made Miss Pringle selfish. In the face of the gift of a costume, which Mrs. Hubbard had actually never worn, having conceived a strong distaste for it on its arrival from the dressmaker, she had time to think of her less fortunate friend.

While waiting for the situation which was sure to come eventually, why didn't Nora run down to Brighton for a week after the terrible London heat? One could get really very comfortable lodgings remarkably cheap at this season. It would do her no end of good and, on the theory that a watched pot never boils, she would be certain to find that there was something for her on her return.

Miss Pringle's brother, it seemed, had had a turn of luck. Just what, she discreetly forbore to mention. Certainly, it could not have been at cards. Nora smiled at the recollection of the horror that Mr. Hornby's remarks as to his earnings from that source had provoked. However, he had most generously sent his sister a ten-pound note as a present. Miss Pringle had, of course, no possible use for it at the time. Also it appeared that the thought of carrying it about with her, particularly as she was going among foreigners, filled her with positive terror. Therefore, she was enclosing it to Nora to take care of. She hoped she would use any part of it or all of it. She could return it after they returned to Tunbridge Wells, provided that Miss Pringle survived the natural perils that beset one who ventured out of England. They would have started on their journey before the receipt of the letter. As to their destination, Miss Pringle said never a word.

A small envelope had fallen into her lap when she opened the letter. With dimmed eyes Nora opened it. It contained the ten-pound note.

It was a week later that it occurred to Nora to answer two advertisements that appeared in one of the morning papers. In each case it was a companion that was wanted. One of the ladies lived at Whitby and pending the answer to her letter she decided to call personally on the other, who lived at Hampstead.

The morning being fine, she decided to make an early start and walk about on Hampstead Heath until a suitable hour for making her call. When she finally arrived before the house, a rather pretentious looking structure in South Hampstead, she was met at the gate by a middle-aged woman of unprepossessing appearance, who inquired rather sharply as to her errand.

"Mrs. Blake's card distinctly said that all applications were to be made in writing," she said disagreeably, in reply to Nora's explanation.

"The one I read did not, at least I don't think it did," said Nora.

"Well, if it didn't, it should have," said the woman tartly.

"May I ask if _you_ are Mrs. Blake?"

"Write and you may find out; although I might as well tell you, you won't answer. Mrs. Blake will be wanting someone of a very different appearance," said the woman rudely.

"I am indeed unfortunate," said Nora with a bow.

The woman closed the gate with a bang and turned toward the house as Nora walked rapidly away. She decided to answer no more advertisements.

One morning, at the end of the week, the post brought her three letters. One from its postmark was clearly from her brother in Canada. She put that aside for the moment to be read at her leisure.

The Yorkshire lady, it appeared, was blind and required a companion to read to her and to assist in preparing some memoirs which her dead brother had left uncompleted. She offered Nora a refined home with every comfort that a lady could desire, but--there was no salary attached to the position. The third was from one of the agencies. A client was prepared to offer a lady companion the magnificent sum of ten shillings a week and her lunch. Out of her salary Nora would be expected, therefore, to find herself a room, clothes, breakfast and supper!

Her brother's letter was, as always, kind and affectionate. He rather vaguely apologized for his delay in replying to hers, written at the time of Miss Wickham's death. He had been frightfully busy, up at dawn and so tired at night that he was glad to tumble into bed right after supper. His wife, too, had had a sharp spell of sickness. However, she was all right again, he was glad to say. Why did not Nora come out to them? They would be glad to offer her a comfortable home, although she must make up her mind to dispense with the luxuries she was accustomed to. But there was always plenty to eat and a good bed, at any rate. He knew she would grow to love the life as he had done. There was a fine freedom about it. For his part, nothing would ever tempt him back to England, except for a visit when he had put by a little more. She would find his wife a good sort. She, too, would welcome her sister-in-law. They would be no end of company for each other during the long days while the men were away. And she would be glad to have someone to lend a hand about the house.

He hoped she had been able to save enough money to pay her passage out. If she hadn't, he would somehow manage to send whatever was necessary. But while he was fairly prosperous, ready money was a little more scarce than usual, for the moment. His wife's illness had been pretty expensive, what with hiring a woman to do all the work, etc., etc.

The letter settled it. On the one hand was this heart-breaking waiting while watching one's little hoard diminish from day to day and always the terrifying and unanswerable question: What is to be done when it is exhausted? On the other, a home and the prospect that she might be able in a measure to pay her way by helping her brother's wife. Nora's housewifely accomplishments were but few, yet she could learn, and while learning she could at least take away the sting of those lonely hours, as her brother had said. On one thing she was resolved: she would let bygones be bygones. She would do everything in her power to win her sister-in-law, forgetting everything but that she was the wife of her only brother.

The next few days were the happiest she had known for a long time. There was a pleasurable excitement in getting ready for so momentous a step. After having paid her passage she found that she had eight pounds in the world, the result of ten years' work as lady's companion. She wrote to let Mr. Wynne know of her decision and enclosed Miss Pringle's banknote to the doctor's wife with an explanatory note asking her to see that it reached her hands safely. Miss Pringle herself should have a long letter from the New World waiting her on her return.

Her last day at home, having satisfied herself that nothing was forgotten, she spent a long hour in the Turner room in the Tate Gallery, drinking it all in for the last time. When she left the building it was with a feeling that the last farewell to the old life was said.

To her great pleasure and a little to her surprise, Nora discovered herself to be a thoroughly good sailor. As a consequence, the voyage to Montreal was quite the most delightful thing she had ever experienced. The boat was a slow one but the time never once seemed long. Indeed, as they approached their destination, she found herself wishing that the Western Continent might, by some convulsion of nature, be removed, quite safely, an indefinite number of leagues farther, or that they might make a dtour by way of the antipodes, anything rather than bring the voyage to an end.

There were but few passengers at this season so that beyond the daily exchange of ordinary courtesies, she was able to pass much of the time by herself. The weather was unusually fine for the time of year. It was possible to spend almost all the daylight hours on deck, and with night came long hours of dreamless sleep such as she never remembered to have enjoyed since childhood. As a consequence, it was a thoroughly rejuvenated Nora that landed in Montreal. The stress and strain of the past summer was forgotten or only to be looked back upon as a sort of horrid nightmare from which she had happily awakened.

It was too late in the day after they had landed to think of continuing her journey. Besides, as is often the case with people who have stood a sea voyage without experiencing any disagreeable sensations, Nora found that she still felt the motion of the boat after landing.

It seemed a pity, too, not to see something of this new-world city while she was on the ground. Her brother's farm was still an incredible distance farther west. People thought nothing of distance in this amazing New World. Still, it might easily be long before she would be here again. The future was a blank page. There was a delightful irresponsibility about the thought. She had come over the sea at her brother's bidding. The future was his care, not hers.

The journey west had the same charm of novelty that the sea voyage had had. The nearest station to Eddie's farm was a place called Dyer in the Province of Manitoba, not far from Winnipeg. Once inured to the new and strange mode of traveling in Canada, so different from what she had been accustomed to, Nora prepared to enjoy it. Never before had she realized the possibilities of beauty in a winter landscape. The flying prospect without the window fascinated her. The magazines and papers with which she had provided herself lay unopened in her lap. She realized that these vast snow-covered stretches might easily drive one mad with their loneliness and desolation if one had to live among them. But to rush through them as they were doing was exhilarating. It was all so strange, so contrary to any previous experience, that Nora had an uncanny feeling that they might easily have left the earth she knew and be flying through space. She whimsically thought that if at the next stop she were to be told that she was on the planet Mars, she would not be greatly astonished. It was like traveling with Alice in Wonderland.

One thing, however, recalled her to earth and prosaic mundane affairs: her supply of money was rapidly getting dangerously low. Barring accident, she would have enough to get her to Dyer, where Eddie was to meet her. But suppose they should be snowed up for a day or two? Only an hour before she had been thrilled with an account of just such an experience which a man in the seat in front of her was recounting to his companion. Well, if that happened, she would either have to go hungry or beg food from the more affluent of her fellow-passengers! Fortunately she was not obliged to put their generosity to the test. The train arrived at Dyer without accident only a few minutes behind the scheduled time.

There were a number of people at the station as Nora alighted. For a moment she had a horrid fear that either she had been put off at the wrong place or that her brother had failed to meet her. Certainly none of the fur-coated figures were in the least familiar. But almost at once one of the men detached himself from the waiting group on the platform and after one hesitating second came toward her.

"Nora, my child, I hardly knew you! I was forgetting that you would be a grown woman," and Nora was half smothered in a furry embrace and kissed on both cheeks before she was quite sure that the advancing stranger was her brother.

"Oh, Eddie, dear, I didn't know you at all. But how can one be expected to with that great cap covering the upper part of your face and a coat collar hiding nearly all the rest. But you really haven't changed, now that I get a look at you. I daresay I have altered more than you. But I was little more than a child when you went away."

"Well, we have quite a little drive ahead of us," said Eddie as, having himself helped to carry Nora's trunks to a nondescript-looking vehicle to which were attached two horses, he motioned to Nora to get in. "I expect you won't be sorry to have a little air after being so long in a stuffy car."

Nora noticed that he gave the man who had helped him with the trunks no tip and that they called each other "Joe" and "Ed." This was democracy with a vengeance. She made a little face of disapproval.

Nora never forgot that drive. In the light of after-events it seemed to have cut her off more sharply from all the old life than either the crossing of the pathless sea or the long overland journey. It was taken for the most part in silence, Eddie's attention being largely taken up with his team. Also Nora noted that he seemed to feel the cold more than she did, as he kept his coat collar turned up all the way. She herself was so occupied with her thoughts that she had no sense of either time or distance.

At last they came in sight of a house such as she had never seen. It was built entirely of logs. At the sound of their approach, the one visible door opened on the crack as if to avoid letting in the cold, and Nora saw a thin dark little woman with rather a hard look and a curiously dried-up skin, whom she rightly guessed to be her sister-in-law, standing in the doorway, while lounging nonchalantly against the doorpost was a tall, strong, well-set-up young man whose age might have been anything between thirty and thirty-five. He had remarkably clean-cut features and was clean-shaven. His frankly humorous gaze rested unabashed on the stranger's face.

Forgetting all her good resolutions to adapt herself to the habits and customs of this new country, Nora felt that she could have struck him in his impudent face. The fact that she reddened under his scrutiny, naturally only made her the more furious.

"Come on out here, some of you," called Eddie jovially. "Heavens! The way you all hug the stove would make anyone believe you'd never seen a Canadian winter before in your lives. Here, Frank, lend a hand with these trunks and call Ben to take the horses. Gertie, this is Nora. Now you need never be lonely again."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Gertie primly.

The man called Frank, the one who had been honoring Nora with his regard, came forward with a hand outstretched to help her alight, while another man, the ordinary type of English laborer placed himself at the horses' heads.

"Come, hop out, Nora."

There was nothing else to do, Nora put the very tips of her fingers into the outstretched hand. To her unspeakable indignation, she felt herself lifted bodily out and actually carried inside the door. At her smothered exclamation, Gertie gave a shrill laugh.

CHAPTER VI

Three weeks had passed with inconceivable rapidity, leaving Nora with the dazed feeling that one has sometimes when waking from a fantastic dream.

There were moments when she was overwhelmed with the utter hopelessness of ever being able to adapt herself to a mode of life so foreign to all her traditions. She had, she told herself, been prepared to find everything different from life at home; and, while she had smiled--on that day such ages ago when young Hornby had called on her at Tunbridge Wells to announce his impending departure from the land of his birth--at his airy theory that the life of the Canadian farmer was largely occupied with riding, hunting, dancing and tennis, she found to her dismay that her own mental picture of her brother's existence had been nearly as far from the reality.

On the drive over from the station, Eddie had vaguely remarked that he had a great surprise for her when she reached the house. Nora had paid but little attention at the moment, thinking that he probably meant the house itself. What had been her astonishment--when once her rage at being lifted bodily from the sled by the man called Frank had permitted of her feeling any other emotion--to find Reginald Hornby himself an inmate of her brother's household. There was but little trace of the ultra smart young Londoner, beyond his still carefully kept hair and mustache. The only difference between his costume and that of the others was that his overalls were newer and that his flannel shirt was plainly a Piccadilly product.

Nora had known gentlemen farmers in England who worked hard, riding about their estates every day supervising and directing everything, and who seemed, from their conversation, to take it all seriously enough. She had made all allowance for the rougher life in a new and unsettled country. There was something picturesque and romantic about the frontiersman which had always appealed to her imagination. She had read a little of him and had seen a play in London the night she recognized Reggie from afar, where the scene was laid in the Far West. On returning to the hotel she had looked with new interest at Eddie's photograph and tried to picture him in the costume worn by the leading man.

But to find that her own brother, a man of education and refinement, actually worked with his own hands like a common laborer and--what to Nora's mind was infinitely more incomprehensible--on a footing of perfect equality with his hired men, calling them familiarly by their given names and being called "Ed" in turn, was a distinctly disagreeable revelation. That they should be familiar with Gertie was quite another matter. Probably they were acquaintances of long standing dating back to her old hotel days.

Her sister-in-law, too, was absolutely different from the type she had imagined. Always she had seen her as one of those vapid, pretty little creatures who had become old long before her time; peevish, spoiled, inclined to be flirtatious, refusing to give up her youth, still living in the recollection of her little day of triumph.

Gertie fulfilled only one of these conditions. She was a small woman, not nearly so tall as Nora herself. In all else she was as different as possible from what she had imagined. There could never have been anything of the 'clinging vine' about Gertie. As a girl she might have been handsome in an almost masculine way; pretty, in the generally accepted sense, she could never have been.

Her one coquetry seemed to be in the matter of shoes. Her feet were unbelievably small. Nora divined that she was inordinately proud of them. While always scrupulously neat, she was apparently indifferent to clothes so long as they were clean and not absolutely shabby. But her high-heeled shoes were the smartest that could be had from Winnipeg.

And as for her being soft and spoiled! Never was there a more tireless and hard-working creature. From early morning till late at night she was never idle. She was a perfect human dynamo of force and energy. The cooking and washing for the 'family' which, now that Nora was here, consisted of six persons, four of whom were men with the appetites which naturally come with a long day's work in the open air, in itself was no light task. But, by way of recreation, after the supper dishes had been washed up, Gertie darned socks, mended shirts, patched trousers for the men folk or sewed on some garment for herself. Nora longed to see her sit with folded hands just once.

That she was as devoted to her husband as he to her there could be no doubt. All other men were a matter of complete indifference to her. Were they good workers or shirkers? That was the only thing about them of any interest. But she was not the sort of woman to show tenderness or affection.

Eddie had apparently the greatest respect for her judgment in all matters pertaining to the running of the farm. Frequently in the evenings they sat together in the far corner of the living room, Eddie talking in a low voice, while Gertie, always at her eternal sewing, listened with close attention, often nodding her head in approval, but occasionally shaking it vehemently when any project failed to meet with her approbation. Occasionally her sharp bird-like glance flashed over the other occupants of the room: at the three men yarning lazily by the big stove or playing cards at the dining table and at Nora making a pretense of reading a six-months-old magazine, or writing, her portfolio on her knee. Always, when Nora encountered that glance, she understood its exultant message.

"Look, you," it said as plainly as if it had been couched in actual words, "look at me ruling over my little court, advising, as a queen might, with her prime minister. You think yourself my superior, you with your fine-lady's airs and graces! A pretty pass your education and accomplishments have brought you to. Of what use are you to anyone?"

There was no blinking the fact: the antagonism between the two women was too instinctive, too deep ever to be more than superficially covered over. They each recognized it. And yet neither was wholly to blame. It had its roots in conditions that were far more significant than mere personal feeling.

Nora, for her part, had come to her brother's house with the sincere intention of doing everything in her power to win her sister-in-law's good will if not affection. She had believed that their common fondness for Eddie would be a sure foundation on which to build. But from the first, without being at all conscious of it, her manner breathed patronage and disapproval of a mode of life so foreign to all her experience. She had made the resolution to remember nothing of Gertie's humble origin, to treat her in every way with the deference due her brother's wife.

Gertie, too, had made good resolutions. She was at heart the more generous nature of the two. She was prepared to find her husband's sister unskilled to the point of incompetency in all the housewifely lore of which she was past mistress; for she, too, had her traditions. She would have laughed at the idea that it was possible for her to be jealous of anybody. But secretly she knew that there was one thing which aroused in her a frenzy of jealous rage; that was those years of her husband's life in which she had neither part nor lot. Any reference to his old life 'at home' fairly maddened her.

And deep down in her heart, each woman nursed a grievance. With Gertie it was the remembrance of the angry letter of protest which Nora had written her brother when she learned of his approaching marriage and which he had been indiscreet enough to show her; with Nora, it was the recollection of Gertie's laugh the night of her arrival when her brother's hired servant had dared to take her for a moment in his arms.

Still, any open rupture might have been avoided or at least delayed for several months longer, if either could have been persuaded to exercise a little more patience and self-control. Each of them, in her different way, had known adversity. Both of them had had to learn to control tempers naturally high while they were still dependent. But it never occurred to either of them that the obligation to do so still existed.

From Gertie's point of view, Nora was just as much a dependent as in the days when she was a hired companion to a rich woman. It was her house in law and in fact, for her husband had made it over to her. It was her bread that she ate, her bed she slept in. It behooved her, therefore, to be a little less lofty and condescending. She had always known how it would be, and it was only because the project seemed so near her husband's heart that she had consented to such an experiment.

In simple justice it must be said that such a thought had never entered Nora's head. She had accepted gladly her brother's invitation to make her home with him. What more natural that he should offer it, now that he was able to do so? In return she was perfectly willing to do everything she could to help in all the woman's work about the house as far as her ignorance would permit. It could hardly be expected that she would be as proficient in household work as a person who had done it all her life. She was more than willing to concede her sister-in-law's superiority in all such matters. And she was perfectly ready to learn all that Gertie would teach her. She had, in everything, been prepared to meet her half-way; further she would not go. For the rest, it was her brother's place to protect her.

Sadly Nora confessed to herself that Eddie had deteriorated in a degree that she could not have believed possible. The first shock had come when they sat down to supper the night of her arrival. To her amazed disgust, they had all eaten at the same table, hired men and all. And then, to see her brother, a gentleman by birth, breeding, and training, sitting down at his own table in his shirt-sleeves!

Her own seat was on the right of her sister-in-law, next Reginald Hornby. All the men except Eddie wore overalls. He had replaced his with an old black waistcoat and a pair of grubby dark trousers. Nora wondered sarcastically if his more formal costume was in honor of her arrival, but quickly remembered that he had had to drive to Dyer. It was cold outside; probably these festive garments were warmer. She found herself speculating as to whether any of the men owned anything but outer coats.

There hadn't been much general conversation at that first meal. Naturally, Eddie had had many questions to ask about old acquaintances in England. Nora had given her first impressions of travel in the New World, addressing many of her remarks to Gertie, who had been noticeably silent. Through all her bright talk the thought would obtrude itself: "What can Reggie Hornby think of my brother?"

She had an angry consciousness, too, that she was unwittingly furnishing much amusement to that objectionable person opposite, whose name she learned was Frank Taylor. She meant to speak to Eddie about him later. He was an entirely new type to her. His fellow servant, whose name was Trotter, on the contrary, could be seen about London any day, an ordinary, ignorant Cockney. He, at least, had the merit of seeming to know his place and how to conduct himself in the presence of his betters, and except when asking for more syrup, of which he seemed inordinately fond, kept discreetly silent.

But the idea that there was any difference in their stations was not betrayed in Taylor's look or manner. He commented humorously from time to time on Nora's various experiences coming overland, quite oblivious, to all appearances, that she pointedly ignored him. Nora had arrived at that point in her gay recital when she had had qualms that her brother had failed to meet her.

"You can fancy how I felt getting down at a perfectly strange station----"

She was interrupted by Gertie's irritating little laugh.

"But what have I said? What is it?"

It was Taylor who replied.

"Well, you see out here in the wilderness we don't call it a station, _we_ call it a depot."

"Do you really?" asked Nora with exaggerated surprise, looking at her brother.

"Custom of the country," he said smilingly.

"But a depot is a place where stores are kept."

"Of course I don't know what you call it in England," said Gertie aggressively, "but while you're in _this_ country, I guess you'd better call it what other folks do."

"It would be rather absurd for me to call it that when it's wrong," said Nora, flushing with annoyance.

Gertie's thin lips tightened.

"Of course I don't pretend to have had _very_ much schooling, but it seems to me I've read something somewhere about doing as the Romans do when you're livin' with them. At any rate, I'm sure of one thing: it's considered the polite thing to do in _any_ country."

The feeling that she had been put in the wrong, even if not very tactfully, did not tend to lessen Nora's annoyance. She looked appealingly at her brother, but he, leaning back in his chair and seeing that his wife's eyes were bent on her plate, shook his head at her, smiling slightly.

"If everyone has finished," said Gertie after an awkward pause, "if you'll all move your chairs away I'll clear away the things."

"May I help you?" said Nora with an effort at conciliation.

"No, thanks."

"No, no. You're company to-night," said her brother with a man's relief at finding an unpleasant situation at an end. "But I daresay to-morrow Gertie'll find plenty for you to do. We'll all be out till dinner time. You girls will have a lot to talk over while you're getting acquainted."

Hornby groaned dismally.

"It doesn't make any difference what the weather is in this blessed country," he said dismally to Nora, "you have to go out whether there's really anything to do or not."

"That's so," laughed Taylor; "still I think you'll admit the Boss always manages to find something to fill up the time."

"That he does," said Hornby with another hollow groan.

"The last time I saw you," said Nora, "you were calling poor old England all sorts of dreadful names. Isn't farming in Canada all your fancy painted it?"

Gertie paused in the act of pouring water from the kettle into the dishpan. "Not a bit like it," she said dryly. "He's like most of the English I've run up against. They think all you've got to do is just to sit down and have afternoon tea and watch the crops grow by themselves."

"Oh, come now, Gertie. You've never had to accuse me of loafing, and I'm an Englishman," said her husband good-naturedly.

"I said 'most.'"

"And as for afternoon tea," broke in Hornby, "I don't believe they have that sacred institution in the whole blessed country."

"You have tea with all your meals. Men out here have something else to do but sit indoors afternoons and eat between meals."

"Do you know," said Nora after a pause, "it isn't nearly so cold as I expected to find it. Don't you usually have it much colder than this?"

"It's rarely colder until later in the season. But Frank, here, who's our champion weather prophet, says it's going to be an exceptional season with hardly any snow at all."

Nora had been conscious all through the evening that Taylor had hardly once taken his eyes from her face. She looked directly at him for the first time, to find him watching her with a look of quiet amusement.

"That would indeed be an exceptional season, if all one hears of the rigors of the climate be true," she said coldly.

"Every season in this country is exceptional," he said humorously; "if it isn't exceptional one way, it's sure to be exceptional the other."

"Fetch me those pants of yours," said Gertie to Trotter.

He left the room, to return shortly with the desired articles, exhibiting a yawning tear in one of the knees. Gertie at once set about mending them in the same workmanlike manner that she did everything.

"Doesn't she ever rest?" asked Nora in an undertone of Hornby.

"Never," he whispered. "Her one recreation is abusing me. I fancy you'll come in for a little of the same medicine. She's planning an amusing winter, I can see that already."

"I think, if I may, I'll ask you to excuse me," said Nora, rising abruptly. "I'm a little tired after my long journey. Oh, how good it'll be to find oneself in a real bed again."

"I'm sure you must be," said her brother. "Nora knows where her room is?" he said, turning to his wife.

"She was up before supper; she can't very well have forgotten the way. The house is small after what she's been accustomed to, I dare say."

"Thank you, I can find it again easily," said Nora hastily. "I'll see you at breakfast, Eddie?" She crossed over to where Gertie was sewing busily. "Good night--Gertie. I hope you will not find me too stupid about learning things. You'll find me willing, anyway," she said almost humbly.

Gertie looked up at her with real kindness.

"Wllling's half the battle," she said in softened tone.

As Nora was leaving the room, satisfied at having done her part as far as Gertie was concerned, she was recalled by Taylor's drawling tone.

"Oh, Miss Nora, you're forgetting something."

"Am I? What?"

"You're forgetting to say 'good night' to me."

"Why, so I am!"

She could hear them laugh as she left the room. And so ended the first day in her brother's house.

Breakfast the next morning was of the most hurried description. Gertie herself did not sit down until the men had gone, being chiefly occupied with baking some sort of hot cakes which were new to Nora, who confined herself to an egg and some tea. She secretly longed for some toast; but as no one else seemed to have any, she refrained from making her wants known. Perhaps later, when she was more familiar with the ways of this strange household, she would be permitted to make some for herself when she wanted it.

While her sister-in-law was eating her breakfast, Nora stood looking out of the window at the vast expanse of snow-covered country with never a house in sight. Already there were signs that Taylor's prophecy would be fulfilled. The sun, which had been up only a few hours, shone brightly, and already the air had lost much of its sharpness. It was distinctly warmer than it had been the day before.

At the first sign that Gertie had finished her breakfast, Nora began to gather the things together for washing, wisely not waiting to ask permission. If possible, Gertie seemed to be less inclined for conversation in the early morning than at night. They finished the task in unbroken silence. When the last dish had been put away, Gertie spoke:

"Can you bake?"

"I have baked cakes."

"How about bread and biscuits?"

"I've never tried them."

"Umph!"

"I should be glad to learn, if you would be good enough to teach me."

"I have little time for teaching," said Gertie ungraciously. "But you can watch how I do it and maybe you'll learn something."

"Can you wash and iron?" said Gertie while she was kneading her dough.

"Of course I can iron and I can wash lace."

"People round here wear more flannel shirts than lace. I suppose you never washed any flannels?"

"No, never."

"Have you ever done any scrubbing?"

"Of course not." Nora was beginning to find this catechism a little trying.

"Not work for a lady, I suppose. Just what does a companion do?"

"It depends. She does whatever her employer requires; reads aloud, acts as secretary, goes riding and shopping with the lady she lives with, arranges the flowers, everything of that sort."

"Oh. But nothing really useful."

Nora gave an angry laugh. "It's clear that some people consider a companion's work useful, since they employ them."

"You take pay for it; after all, it's much the same as being a servant."

"It's not at all the same."

"Ed tells me that sometimes when Miss Wickers, Wickham--whatever her name was----"

"Miss Wickham."

"That when Miss Wickham had company for dinner, you had to have your dinner alone."

"That is true."

"Then she considered you sort of a servant," said Gertie triumphantly. Nora was silent. Gertie having cut her dough into small round pieces with a tin cutter and put them into her pans, went toward the oven.

"And yet you object to eating at the same table with the hired men."

Having satisfied herself that the oven was at the proper heat, she shut the door with a bang.

"I've said nothing about it."

"You didn't need to."

"But I most certainly do object to it and I can't for the life of me see the necessity of it."

"I was what you call a servant for years; I suppose you object to eating at the table with me."

"What perfect nonsense! It's not at all the same thing. You're my brother's wife and the mistress of his house."

"Yes, I'm the mistress of the house all right," said Gertie grimly.

"Frank Taylor's an uncommonly handsome man, isn't he?"

"I really haven't noticed."

"What perfect nonsense!" mimicked Gertie. "Of course you've noticed. Any woman would notice him."

"Then I must be different from other women."

"Oh, no, you're not; you only think you are. At bottom women are all alike, take it from me, and I've known a few."

"If I can be of no help to you here, I think I'll go and unpack my box," said Nora. She felt as if she had borne all she possibly could.

"As you like."

Once in her own room, Nora found it hard to keep back her angry tears. Only the thought that her reddened eyes would betray her to Gertie at dinner kept her from having a good cry.

CHAPTER VII

That one morning was a fair sample of all the other days. Each suspected the other, neither would make allowances or concessions. As a consequence, day by day the breach widened. Even Eddie, who was more unobserving than most men, felt vaguely uncomfortable in the surcharged atmosphere. From the first Nora realized that it was an unequal contest; Gertie was too strongly intrenched in her position. But it was not in her nature to refrain from administering those little thrusts, which women know so well how to deal one another, from any motive of policy. The question of what she should do once her brother's house became intolerable she never permitted herself to ask.

In the needle-pricking mode of warfare she was, of course, far more expert than her rival. But if Gertie's hand was clumsy it was also heavy. And always in the back of her mind was the consciousness that she, so to speak, had at least one piece of heavy artillery which she could bring up once the enemy's fire became unendurable.

During the day, the men being out of the house except at meal time, there was to a certain degree, a cessation of hostilities. Nora gradually acquired some knowledge of housework. She learned to cook fairly well and always helped with the washing, rarely complaining of her aching arms and back. The only indication she had that she was making progress was that Gertie complained less. Praise, of course, was not to be expected.

At dinner the men were usually too anxious to get back to work--always with the exception of Hornby, who according to his own highly colored account, had been assigned the herculean task of splitting all the wood required by the Province of Manitoba for the ensuing winter--to linger longer than the time required for smoking a hurried pipe, so that it was only during the long evenings that hostilities were resumed. And then, more or less under cover.

There was one person upon whom Nora could openly vent her nervous irritation after a long day in Gertie's society, and that was Frank Taylor. They quarreled constantly, to the great amusement of the others. But with him, too, she felt hopelessly at a disadvantage. He was maddeningly sure of himself, and while he sometimes gave back thrust for thrust, he never lost his temper. Seemingly, nothing could penetrate his armor of good nature, nor make him comprehend that she really meant her bitter words. Slow of movement and speech, his mind was alert enough, and Nora had to admit to herself, although she always openly denied it, that he had humor. To lose one's own temper in a wordy passage at arms and find one's opponent still smiling and serene is not a soothing experience.

Often, in the darkness of the night after she had gone to bed, she could feel her cheek burn at the recollection that this 'ignorant clod,' as she contemptuously called him to herself, had the power to make her feel a weak, undisciplined child by merely never losing his self-control.

There would have been consolation in the thought that in his stupidity he did not understand how she despised him, how infinitely beneath her she considered him, had it not been darkened by the suspicion that he understood perfectly well _and didn't care_.

How dared he, how dared he!

She had complained of his familiar manner to her brother a day or two after her arrival. But he had given her neither support nor consolation.

"My dear Nora," he said, "we are not back in England. The sooner you forget all the old notions of class and class distinctions, the happier you'll be. They won't go here. As long as a man's straight, honest and a worker--and Frank's all three--it doesn't make any odds whether he's working for himself or for someone else. We're all on the same footing. It is only due to the fact that I've had two good years in succession that I'm not somebody's 'hired man' myself."

"Don't, Eddie, don't; you don't realize how you hurt me."

"My dear girl, I'm sorry; but I'm in dead earnest."

"You, a hired man? Oh, I can't believe it."

"It's true, nevertheless. Plenty of better fellows than I have had to do it. When you're starting in, unless you have a good deal bigger capital than I had, you only need to be hailed out, frosted out, or weeded out a couple of years in succession to use up your little stake, and then where are you?"

"What do you mean by 'weeded out'?"

He was just about to explain when a halloo from the stables cut him short. "There's Frank now. I ought to be out helping him this minute; we've got a good stiff drive ahead of us. You ask Gertie about it, she'll explain it to you."

But Gertie had been deeply preoccupied with some domestic problem and Nora had forborne to question her. She had intended returning to the subject that evening, but Eddie and Gertie were deep in one of their conferences until nearly bedtime. It would never have suggested itself to her to seek any information from the objectionable Frank, so under cover of a heated discussion between him and Trotter, she appealed to Reggie.

"What does it mean to be weeded out?"

"Oh, Lord, I don't know! Kicked out, I suppose. Isn't there something in the Bible about tares and wheat?"

"Nonsense; it doesn't mean that. I'd forgotten, by the way, how strong you were on Biblical references. Do you remember your discussion about Sarah and Benjamin with Agnes Pringle?"

"Of course I do. And I completely stumped her; don't you recollect?"

"Goose! She only wanted to make you look it up for yourself. But being 'weeded out' is something disastrous that happens to the farmers here, like having the crops frozen."

"Well, it hasn't happened since I've been here, anyway. But I'll bet you a bob it means kicked out. I tell you, I'll ask Gertie if she doesn't think that I ought to be weeded out."

"You'd better not," laughed Nora.

The first open quarrel had taken place one day at dinner.

The night before Nora had proposed making her first attempt at baking bread. Gertie had given a grudging consent. Everything had gone well until the bread, once in the oven, Nora had gone to her room to add some pages to a long letter which she had begun, some evenings before to Agnes Pringle.

Gertie had been out in one of the barns most of the morning engaged in some mysterious task which she had been reserving until the weather became milder--there had been a decided thaw, setting in the day before--and Nora intended to be gone only a short time.

Filled with a warm feeling of gratitude to Miss Pringle for her generous loan of the ten-pound note, she was writing her a long letter in the form of a diary describing her voyage across the Atlantic and the trip across the Continent, both of which she was sure would greatly interest her friend and furnish her with topics for her tte--tte dinners with the excellent Mrs. Hubbard for some days to come.

Of the difficulties and disappointments in her new life she was resolved to say nothing. Nora hated to confess that she had failed in anything. And, so far, she could hardly say that she had made a success. Later on, she might have to acknowledge that her move had been a mistake. But for the moment she would confine herself to describing all that struck her as novel and strange while the impression was still fresh, while she still had the 'seeing eye.'

"When I came to the end of my last page (and I remember that I was getting extremely sleepy at that point)," she wrote, "I had just finished describing the exterior of my brother's house to you. I am sure I can never do justice to the interior! You can never have seen, much less imagined, anything in the least like it. I have decided, upon reflection, that it is the most un-English thing I have seen yet: and I have not forgotten those strange railway carriages either.

"Try to imagine a large room, longer than it is deep, at once living-room, dining-room and kitchen; with nothing but rough brown boards for walls, on which--some framed, some unframed--are the colored supplements of the Christmas illustrated papers, both English and American. Over one of the doors is a magnificent trophy--at least that is what we would call it at home--I think it is a moose. I am not at all sure, although I have been told more than once. Over another door is a large clock, such a one as one finds in a broker's office with us. The floor is covered with what is called oilcloth--I wonder why: it certainly is not the least like cloth--very new and excessively shiny. It has a conventional pattern in black and white, and when the sun shines on it, it quite dazzles one's eyes.

"There are two windows, one to the south, the other looking west. The western view is magnificent. I feel as if I could see straight away to the setting sun! In the summer, when the prairie is one great waving green sea, it must be superb. Two days ago it was covered with snow. As I write, I can see great patches of brown every here and there, for we have had a sudden thaw. The window sills are filled with geraniums planted, my dear, in tins which once contained syrup, of which everyone here, including my brother, seems extravagantly fond. The syrup jug appears regularly at every meal and is almost the first thing put on the table. I have yet to acquire a taste for it--which they all think extremely queer.

"The furniture consists of two American rockers and a number of kitchen chairs; an unvarnished deal dresser covered with earthenware;--I don't think there are any two pieces that match!--two tables, one a dining table; a bookcase containing a few paper-backed novels and some magazines, none so recent, however, as those I saw before I left England; and last and most important, an enormous American cooking stove.

"Our principal meal, called dinner, is----"

Great heavens, her bread!

Nora dashed from her room. Gertie was standing at one of the windows in the unwonted indulgence of a moment's leisure. Nora threw open the oven door. It was empty.

"Oh, did you look after my loaf, Gertie? I'm so sorry; I quite forgot it."

"Yes, I took it out a few moments ago."

She still had her face turned toward the window, so Nora did not see the smile that curled her lip. She turned after a moment, and the two women began to set the table for dinner.

Presently the men were heard laughing outside as they cleaned their muddy boots on the scraper. Reggie had apparently achieved something new. His ignorance of everything pertaining to farming furnished the material for most of the amusement that was going. Fortunately, he was always good-natured. Gertie, with unusual good spirits, entered into the joke of the thing at once and even bantered Reggie playfully upon his latest discovery.

Nora did not even hear what it was all about. She was searching for the bread plate which always stood on the dresser.

"Why, Gertie, I----"

"It's all right," said Gertie, without looking up from pouring the tea. "I took it. I'll get it in a minute. Come, sit down."

Nora obeyed.

Hornby was just about to begin his explanation for whatever it was he had done, when Eddie interrupted him:

"Hold on a minute, Reg. I want some bread. I declare you two girls are getting to be as bad as Reggie, here. Setting a table without bread!"

"I was keeping it for a surprise," said Gertie, getting up slowly. "I want you to appreciate the fact that Nora helped me by doing the baking this morning." Nora's face flushed with pleasure as her brother patted her on the shoulder with evident approval. She looked at Gertie with eyes shining with gratitude. At that moment she came nearer liking her sister-in-law than she ever was to again.

Gertie went slowly across the room--she usually moved with nervous quickness--and picking up the missing bread plate from where it was leaning against the wall behind the stove went into the little pantry that gave off the kitchen. Slowly she returned and stood beside her husband's chair. On the plate, burned almost to a cinder, was the loaf of bread that Nora had forgotten.

"Here it is," said Gertie. Her smile was cruel.

"Oh, I say, Gertie, that's too bad of you." It was Frank who spoke.

"Too bad!" Nora sprung to her feet with flashing eyes. "Too bad. It's mean and despicable. There are no words to do it justice. But what could I expect from----"

"Nora!" said her brother sharply.

Nora rushed from the table to her room. And although Eddie knocked repeatedly at her door and begged her to let him speak with her if only for a moment that evening at supper-time, she made no sign nor did anyone see her again that night.

She made a point of not coming down to breakfast the next morning until after the time when the men would be gone. She thought it best to meet Gertie alone. It was time that they came to some sort of understanding. To her surprise and annoyance Taylor was still at the table. Gertie was nowhere to be seen.

"Come down to keep me company? That's real nice of you, I'm sure."

"I supposed, naturally, that you had gone. You usually have at this hour."

"You don't know how it flatters a fellow to have women folks study his habits like that," he said with a grin.

"I knew that my brother had left the house, since I saw him go. I took it for granted that all his employees left when he did. Let me assure you, once and for all, that your habits are of no possible interest to me."

Taylor put on his hat and went to the door. Just as he was about to open it, he changed his mind and came back to the table where Nora had seated herself and stood leaning on the back of his chair looking down at her.

"It's all right for us to row," he said, "but if I were you I'd go a little easy with Gertie. She's all right and a good sort at bottom, you can take it from me. Yesterday, I admit she was downright nasty. I guess you rile her up more than she's used to. But I want to see you two get on."

"It's my turn to feel flattered," said Nora sarcastically.

"Well, so long," he said with undiminished good humor as he went out.

Gertie appeared almost at once from the pantry.

"I heard what he said. I couldn't help it. He was right--about us both. We don't hit it off. But I'm willing to give it another try."

"I have little choice but to agree with you," said Nora bitterly.

"Well, that's hardly the way to begin," retorted Gertie angrily.

There was a certain air of restraint about them ail when they came in to dinner. Eddie looked both worried and anxious. But as he saw that the two women were going about their duties much the same as usual, he argued that the storm had blown over and brightened visibly.

The men had pushed back their chairs and were preparing to light their after-dinner pipes.

"We'll be able to start on the ironing this afternoon," said Gertie, addressing Nora for the first time since breakfast.

"Very well."

"I say," said Trotter, who rarely ventured on a remark while at the table, "it was a rare big wash you done this morning by the look of it on the line."

"When she's been out in this country a bit longer, Nora'll learn not to wear more things than she can help," said Gertie.

As a matter of fact, she had no intention of criticising Nora at the moment. She meant, merely, that she would be more economical with experience. But Nora was in the mood to take fire at once.

"Was there more than my fair share?" she asked sharply.

"You use double the number of stockings than what I do. And everything else is the same."

"I see. Clean but incompetent."

"There's many a true word spoken in jest," said Gertie with angry emphasis.

"Say, Reg," Taylor broke in hastily, "is it true that when you first came out you asked Ed where the bath-room was?"

"That's right," laughed Trotter. "Ed told 'im there was a river a mile and a 'alf from 'ere, an' that was the only bath-room 'e knowed."

"One gets used to that sort of thing, eh, Reg?" said Marsh good-naturedly.

"Ra-ther. If I saw a proper bath-room _now_, it would only make me feel nervous."

"I knew a couple of Englishmen out in British Columbia," broke in Taylor, "who were bathing, and the only other people around were Indians. The first two years they were there, they wouldn't have anything to do with the Indians because they were so dirty. After that the Indians wouldn't have anything to do with them."

He pointed this delectable anecdote by holding his nose.

"What a disgusting story!" said Nora.

"D'you think so? I rather like it."

"_You_ would."

"Now don't start quarreling, you two. And on Frank's last day."

Nora gave her brother a quick glance. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he meant by Frank's last day, but seeing that Taylor was watching her with an amused smile, she held her tongue. Getting up, she began clearing away the table.

Hornby, ramming the tobacco into his pipe, went over to the corner by the stove, where Gertie was scalding out her large dishpan, and tried to interest her in the number of logs he had split since breakfast, without conspicuous success.

Trotter stood looking out of the window, while Marsh stretched himself lazily in one of the rocking chairs with a sigh of content. Things were beginning to shake down a little better. There had been a time yesterday when he feared that everything was off. He knew Nora's temper of old and he knew his wife's jealous fear of her criticism. It would take some rubbing to wear off the sharp corners. But things were coming out all right, after all. They'd soon be working together like a well-broken team. Gertie had been nasty about the bread. But apparently everything was patched up. And with Frank once gone, and the new chap--a man of the Trotter type, who would never obtrude himself--he foresaw that everything would run on wheels, an idea dear to his peace-loving soul.

Not that he was not sorry to lose Frank. In the first place, he liked him, and then he was a good, steady, hard-working fellow, one of the kind you didn't have to stand over. But, naturally, he wanted to get back to his own place, now that he had saved up a bit. Every man liked being his own master.

Taylor alone had remained at his place at the table. Nora had cleared away everything except the dishes at his place. She never went near him if she could avoid it.

"I guess I'm in your way," he said, rising.

"Not more than usual, thank you."

Taylor gave a little laugh.

"I guess you'll not be sorry to see the last of me."

Nora paused in her work, and leaning on the table with both hands, looked him steadily in the face.

"I can't honestly say that it makes the least difference to me whether you go or stay," she said coldly.

"When does your train go, Frank?" asked Hornby from his corner.

"Half-past three; I'll be starting from here in about an hour."

"Reg can go over with you and drive the rig back again," said Marsh.

"All right. I'll go and dress myself in a bit."

"I guess you'll be glad to get back to your own place," said Gertie warmly.

She had always liked Frank Taylor--a man who worked hard and earned his money. She did not begrudge him a cent of it, nor the pleasure he had in the thought of getting back to his own place. He was the kind of man who should set up for himself.

"Well, I guess I'll not be sorry." He sat looking out of the window with a sort of dreamy air, as if seeing far to the westward his own land.

So that was the reason for his going. He had a place of his own. He was only a hired man for the moment. Eddie had told her that a man frequently had to hire out after a succession of bad seasons. What of it? His keeping it to himself was the crowning impertinence!

CHAPTER VIII

"I'll do the washing, Nora, and you can dry," said Gertie in that peculiar tone which Nora had learned to recognize as the preface to something disagreeable.

"All right."

"I've noticed the things aren't half clean when I leave them to you to do."

"I'm sorry; why didn't you tell me?"

"I suppose yon never did the washing-up in England. Too grand?"

But Nora was not to be ruffled just now. Her resentment against Taylor, who was sitting watching her as if he read her thoughts--she often wondered how much of them he _did_ read--made anything Gertie said seem momentarily unimportant.

"I don't suppose anyone would wash up if they could help it. It's not very amusing."

"You always want to be amused?"

"No, but I want to be happy."

"Well," said Gertie sharply, "you've got a roof over your head and a comfortable bed to sleep in, three good meals a day and plenty to do. That's all anybody wants to make them happy, I guess."

"Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Reggie from his corner.

"Well," said Gertie, turning sharply on him, "if you don't like Canada, why did you come out?"

"You don't suppose," said Hornby, rising slowly to his feet, "I'd have let them send me if I'd have known what I was in for, do you? Not much. Up at five in the morning and working about the place like a navvy till your back feels as if it 'ud break, and then back again in the afternoon. And the same thing day after day. What was the good of sending me to Harrow and Oxford if that's what I've got to do all my life?"

There was a tragic dignity in his tone which for the moment held even Gertie silent. It was her husband who answered him, and Gertie's jealous ear detected a certain wistfulness in his voice.

"You'll get used to it soon enough, Reg. It _is_ a bit hard at first, I'll admit. But when you get your foot in, you wouldn't change it for any other life."

"This isn't a country for a man to go to sleep in and wait for something to turn up," said Gertie aggressively.

"I wouldn't go back to England now, not for nothing," said Trotter, stung to an unusual burst of eloquence. "England! Eighteen bob a week, that's what I earned. And no prospects. Out of work five months in the year."

"What did you do in England!" asked Nora curiously.

"Bricklayer, Miss."

"You needn't call her Miss," said Gertie heatedly. "You call me Gertie, don't you? Well, _her_ name's Nora."

"What with strikes and bad times," went on Trotter unheeding, "you never knew where you was. And the foreman always bullying you. I don't know what all. I 'ad about enough of it, I can tell you. I've never been out of work since the day I landed. I've 'ad as much to eat as I wanted and I'm saving money. In this country everybody's as good as everybody else."

"If not better," said Nora dryly.

"In two years I shall be able to set up for myself. Why, there's old man Thompson, up at Pratt. _He_ started as a bricklayer, same as I. Come from Yorkshire, he did. He's got seven thousand dollars in the bank now."

"Believe me, you fellows who come out now have a much softer thing of it than I did when I first came. In those days they wouldn't have an Englishman, they'd have a Galician rather. In Winnipeg, when they advertised in the paper for labor, you'd see often as not: 'No English need apply.'"

"Well, it was their own fault," stormed Gertie. "They wouldn't work or anything. They just soaked."

"It _was_ their own fault, right enough. This was the dumping ground for all the idlers, drunkards and scallywags in England. They had the delusion over there that if a man was too big a rotter to do anything at all at home, he'd only got to be sent out here and he'd make a fortune."

"I guess things ain't as bad as that now," spoke up Taylor. "They send us a different class. It takes an Englishman two years longer than anybody else to get the hang of things, but when once he tumbles to it, he's better than any of them."

"Ah, well!" said Marsh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "I guess nowadays everyone's glad to see the Englishman make good. When I nearly smashed up three years ago, I had no end of offers of help."

"How _did_ you nearly smash up?" asked Hornby interestedly.

"Oh, I had a run of bad luck. One year the crop was frosted and the next year I was hailed out. It wants a good deal of capital to stand up against that."

"That's what happened to me," said Taylor. "I was hailed out and I hadn't got any capital, so I just had to hire out." He turned suddenly to Nora. "If it hadn't been for that hail storm you wouldn't have had the pleasure of makin' my acquaintance."

"How hollow and empty life would have been without that!" she said ironically.

"I wonder you didn't just quit and start out Calgary way," put in Gertie.

"Well," said Taylor slowly, "it was this way: I'd put in two years on my homestead and done a lot of clearing. It seemed kind of silly to lose my rights after all that. Then, too, when you've been hailed out once, the chances are it won't happen again, for some years that is, and by that time I ought to have a bit put by."

"What sort of house have you got?" asked Nora.

"Well, it ain't what you might call a palace, but it's large enough for two."

"Thinking of marrying, Frank?" asked Marsh.

"Well, I guess it's kind of lonesome on a farm without a woman. But it's not so easy to find a wife when you're just starting on your own. Canadian girls think twice before taking a farmer."

"They know something, I guess," said Gertie grimly.

"You took me, Gertie," laughed her husband.

"Not because I wanted to, you can be sure of that. I don't know how you got round me."

"I wonder."

"I guess it was because you was kind of helpless, and I didn't know what you'd do without me."

"I guess it was love, and you couldn't help yourself." Gertie stopped her work long enough to make a little grimacing protest.

"I'm thinking of going to one of them employment agencies when I get to Winnipeg," said Taylor, moving his chair so that he could watch Nora's face, "and looking the girls over."

"Like sheep," said Nora scornfully.

"I don't know anything about sheep. I've never had to do with sheep."

"And may I ask, do you think that you know anything about women?"

"I guess I can tell if they're strong and willing. And so long as they ain't cock-eyed, I don't mind taking the rest on trust."

"And what inducement is there for a girl to have you?"

"That's why he wants to catch 'em young, when they're just landed and don't know much," laughed Trotter uproariously.

"I've got my quarter-section," went on the imperturbable Frank, quite undisturbed by the laughter caused by Trotter's sally, "a good hundred and sixty acres with seventy of it cleared. And I've got a shack that I built myself. That's something, ain't it?"

"You've got a home to offer and enough to eat and drink. A girl can get that anywhere. Why, I'm told they're simply begging for service."

"Y-e-e-s. But you see some girls like getting married. There's something in the word that appeals to them."

"You seem to think that a girl would jump at the chance of marrying you!" said Nora with rising temper.

"She might do worse."

"I must say I think you flatter yourself."

"Oh, I don't know. I know my job, and there ain't too many as can say that. I've got brains."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, I can see you're no fool."

Gertie chuckled with amusement. "He certainly put one over on you then, Nora."

"Because you've got no use for me, there's no saying but what others may have."

"I forgot that there's no accounting for tastes."

"I can try, can't I?"

Wishing to escape any further conversation with the object of her detestation, and seeing her opportunity now that the dishes were washed, Nora started to empty the dishpan in the sink in the pantry. But Gertie, who divined her motive and wished the sport to continue, forestalled her.

"I'll do it," she said. "You finish wiping the dishes."

"It's very wise of you to go to an agency," said Nora in answer to his last question. "A girl's more likely to marry you when she's only seen you once than when she's seen you often."

"It seems to make you quite mad, the thought of me marrying!" with a wink at the others.

"You wouldn't talk about it like that unless you looked down upon women. Oh, how I pity the poor wretched creature who becomes your wife!"

"Oh, I guess she won't have such a bad time--when I've broken her in to my ways."

"And are you under the impression that you can do that?"

"Yep."

"You're not expecting that there'll be much love lost between you and the girl whom you--you honor with your choice?"

"What's love got to do with it?" asked Taylor in affected surprise. "It's a business undertaking."

"What!" Nora's eyes were dark with indignation and anger.

"None at all. I give her board and lodging and the charm of my society. And in return, she's got to cook and bake and wash and keep the shack clean and tidy. And if she can do that, I'll not be particular what she looks like."

"So long as she's not cock-eyed," Reggie reminded him.

"No, I draw the line at that."

"I beg your pardon," said Nora with bitter irony; "I didn't know it was a general servant you wanted. You spend a dollar and a half on a marriage license and then you don't have to pay any wages. It's a good investment."

For the first time she seemed to have pierced the enemy's armor.

"You've got a sharp tongue in your head for a girl, Nora."

"Please don't call me Nora."

"Don't be so silly, Nora," said her brother with a trace of irritation. "It's the custom of the country. Why, they all call me Ed."

"I don't care what the custom of the country is. I'm not going to be called Nora by the hired man!"

"Don't you bother, Ed," said Frank, apparently once more restored to his normal placidity; "I'll call her Miss Marsh if she likes it better."

But Nora was not to be pacified. He wouldn't have dared take such a liberty with her had he not been on the eve of going away for good, she told herself. It was a last shot from a retreating enemy. Well and good. He should hear, if for the last time, what she thought of him!

"I should like to see you married to someone who'd give you what you deserved. I'd like to see your pride humbled. You think yourself very high and mighty, don't you? I'd like to see a woman take you by the heartstrings and wring them till you screamed with pain."

"Oh, Nora, how violent you are!" said Ed.

"You're overbearing, supercilious and egotistic," went on Nora bitingly.

"I'm not sure as I know what them long words means, but I guess they ain't exactly complimentary."

"I guess they ain't," she mimicked.

"I'm sorry for that." Taylor straightened himself a little in his chair. His blue eyes seemed to have caught a little of the light from Nora's.

"I was thinking of offering you the position before I went to the employment agency."

"How dare you speak to me like that!"

"Don't fly into a temper, Nora," said Ed. While he didn't blame Frank, he wished he had not made that last speech. Why didn't he go and get ready for town? Here was Nora all upset again just as things had calmed down a bit!

"He's got no right to say impudent things to me!"

"Don't you see he's only having a joke with you?" he said soothingly.

"He shouldn't joke. He's got no sense of humor."

She made a furious gesture, and the cup she was in the act of wiping flew out of her hand, crashing in a thousand pieces on the floor, just as Gertie returned.

"Butter fingers!"

"I'm so sorry," said Nora in a colorless tone. She was raging inwardly at having allowed that beast of a man to put her in such a temper. Why couldn't she control herself? How undignified to bandy words with a person she so despised. It was hardly the moment for Gertie to take her to task for carelessness. But Gertie was not the person to consider other moods than her own.

"You clumsy thing! You're always doing something wrong."

"Oh, don't worry; I'll pay for it."

"Who wants you to pay for it? Do you think I can't afford to pay for a miserable cup! You might say you're sorry: that's all I want you to do."

"I said I was sorry."

"No, you didn't."

"I heard her, Gertie," broke in Ed.

"She said she was sorry as if she was doing me a favor," said Gertie, turning furiously on the would-be peacemaker.

"You don't expect me to go down on my knees to you, do you? The cup's worth twopence."

"It isn't the value I'm thinking about, it's the carelessness."

"It's only the third thing I've broken since I've been here."

If Nora had been in a calmer mood herself she would not have been so stupid as to attempt to palliate her offense. Her offer of replacing the miserable cup only added fuel to the flame of Gertie's resentment.

"You can't do anything!" she stormed. "You're more helpless than a child of six. You're all the same, all of you."

"You're not going to abuse the whole British nation because I've broken a cup worth twopence, are you?"

"And the airs you put on. Condescending isn't the word. It's enough to try the patience of a saint."

"Oh, shut up!" said Marsh. He went over to his wife and laid a hand on her shoulder. She shook him off impatiently.

"You've never done a stroke of work in your life, and you come here and think you can teach me everything."

"I don't know about that," said Nora, in a voice which by comparison with Gertie's seemed low but which was nevertheless perfectly audible to every person in the room. "I don't know about that, but I think I can teach you manners."

If she had lashed the other woman across the face with a whip, she couldn't have cut more deeply. She knew that, and was glad. Gertie's face turned gray.

"How dare you say that! How dare you! You come here, and I give you a home. You sleep in my blankets and you eat my food and then you insult me." She burst into a passion of angry tears.

"Now then, Gertie, don't cry. Don't be so silly," said her husband as he might have spoken to an angry child.

"Oh, leave me alone," she flashed back at him. "Of course you take her part. You would! It's nothing to you that I have made a slave of myself for you for three whole years. As soon as _she_ comes along and plays the lady----"

She rushed from the room. After a moment, Ed followed after her.

There was an awkward pause. Nora stood leaning against the table swinging the dishcloth in her hand, a smile of malicious triumph on her face. Gertie had tried it on once too often. But she had shown her that one could go too far. She would think twice before she attempted to bully her again, especially before other people. She stooped down and began to gather up the broken pieces of earthenware scattered about her feet. Her movement broke the spell which had held the three men paralyzed as men always are in the presence of quarreling women.

"I reckon I might be cleaning myself," said Taylor, rising from his chair. "Time's getting on. You're coming, Ben?"

"Yes, I'm coming. I suppose you'll take the mare?"

"Yep, that's what Ed said this morning."