drove away."

"Ah," commented Sally, "you want somebody to keep the house straight and
look after you. Didn't you know any nice girls back there in the Old
Country?"

She spoke naturally, and there was nothing to show that the girl's heart
beat a little more rapidly than usual as she watched Hawtrey. His face,
however, grew a trifle graver, for she had touched upon a momentous
question to such men as he. Living in Spartan simplicity upon the
prairie, there are a good many of them, well-trained, well-connected
young Englishmen, and others like them from Canadian cities. They
naturally look for some grace of culture or refinement in the woman they
would marry, and there are few women of the station to which they once
belonged who could face the loneliness and unassisted drudgery that must
be borne by the small wheat-grower's wife. There were also reasons why
this question had been troubling Hawtrey in particular of late.

"Oh, yes, of course, I knew nice girls in England, one or two," he
answered. "I'm not quite sure, however, that girls of that kind would
find things even moderately comfortable here."

A certain reflectiveness in his tone, which seemed to indicate that he
had already given the matter some consideration, jarred upon Sally.
Moreover, she had an ample share of the Western farmer's pride, which
firmly declines to believe that there is any land to compare with the
one the plow is slowly wresting from the wide white levels of the
prairie.

"We make out well enough," she asserted with a snap in her eyes.

Hawtrey made an expressive gesture. "Oh, yes," he admitted, "it's in
you. All you want in order to beat the wilderness and turn it into a
garden is an ax, a span of oxen, and a breaker plow. You ought to be
proud of your energy. Still, you see, our folks back yonder aren't quite
the same as you."

Sally partly understood him. "Ah," she replied, "they want more, and,
perhaps, they're used to having more than we have; but isn't that in one
way their misfortune? Is it what folks want, or what they can do, that
makes them of use to anybody else?"

There was a hard truth in her suggestion, but Hawtrey, who seldom
occupied himself with matters of that kind, smiled.

"Oh," he said, "I don't know; but, after all, it wouldn't be worth while
for us to raise wheat here unless there were folks back East to eat it,
and, if some of them only eat in the shape of dainty cakes, that doesn't
affect the question. Any