ic! You
move with a spring and verve; and I don't hear any grumbling, though
there seems to be so much to do!"

"And to bear now and then: crops wiped out--I've lost two of them. The
work never slackens, except in winter, when you sit shivering beside the
stove, if you're not hauling in building logs or cordwood through the
arctic frost. At night it's deadly silent, unless there's a blizzard
howling; the plains are very lonely when the snow lies deep. Don't you
think you're better off in England, taking it all 'round?"

He laid respectful fingers on the hem of her skirt, touching the fine
material, as if appraising its worth.

"Our wheat-growers' wives and daughters are lucky if they've a couple of
moderately smart dresses, but I suppose you have several trunks full of
things like this. That and the kind of life it implies must count for
something."

"I believe I have," said Muriel with candor, answering his steady
inquiring glance. "Still, I've felt that we drift along from amusement to
amusement in a purposeless way, doing nothing that's worth while. There
might come a time when one would grow very tired of it."

"It must come and bring trouble then. Here one goes on from task to task,
each one bigger and more venturesome than the last; acre added to acre, a
gasoline tractor to the horse-plow, another quarter-section broken. Mind
and body taxed all day and often half the night. One can't sit down and
mope."

This was, she thought, a curious speech for a man who had been described
as careless, extravagant, and dissolute; but he was getting too serious,
and she laughed.

"You were energetic enough in England, if reports are true. I've often
thought of your right-of-way adventure. It must have been very dramatic
when you appeared at the garden party covered with fresh tar."

"Sounds like that, doesn't it?" he cautiously agreed. "How do they tell
the tale?"

"Something like this--you were at the Hall with Geoffrey when the
townspeople were clamoring about Sir Gilbert's closing the path through
the wood, and for some reason you assisted them in attacking the
barricade. It had been well tarred as a defensive measure, hadn't it?
Then you returned, triumphant, black from head to foot, when you thought
the guests had gone, and plunged into the middle of the last of
them--Maud always laughs when she talks about it. Sir Gilbert was
somewhere out of sight when you related the rabble's brilliant victory,
but he dashed