ough I don't suppose
she knows it. She had Mary Barner and the young minister for tea
to-night. Mary grows dearer and sweeter every day. People say it is not
often one girl praises another; but Mary is a dear little gray-eyed
saint with the most shapely hands I ever saw. Reverend Hugh thinks so,
too, I have no doubt. It was really too bad to waste a good fruit salad
on him though, for I know he didn't know what he was eating. Excelsior
would taste like ambrosia to him if Mary sat opposite--all of which is
very much as it should be, I know. I thought for a while Mary liked Dr.
Clay pretty well, but I know it is not serious, for she talks quite
freely of him. She is very grateful to him for helping her so often
with her father. But those gray-eyed Scotch people never talk of what
is nearest the heart. I wonder if he knows that Mary Barner is a queen
among women. I don't like Scotchmen. They take too much for granted.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIFTH SON

Arthur Wemyss, fifth son of the Reverend Alfred Austin Wemyss, Rector
of St. Agnes, Tilbury Road, County of Kent, England, had but recently
crossed the ocean. He and six hundred other fifth sons of rectors and
earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been
scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be
instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and
incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp,
who regarded all Old Country men as their lawful meat.

The honest granger was paid a sum varying between fifty and one hundred
fifty dollars for instructing one of these young fellows in farming for
one year, and although having an Englishman was known to be a pretty
good investment, the farmers usually spoke of them as they would of the
French-weed or the rust in the wheat. Sam Motherwell referred to his
quite often as "that blamed Englishman" and often said, unjustly, that
he was losing money on him every day.

Arthur--the Motherwells could not have told his other name--had learned
something since he came. He could pull pig-weed for the pigs and throw
it into the pen; he had learned to detect French-weed in the grain; he
could milk; he could turn the cream-separator; he could wash dishes and
churn, and he did it all with a willingness, a cheerfulness that would
have appealed favourably to almost any other farmer in the
neighbourhood, but the lines had fallen to Arthur in a stony place, and
his emp