e benefit of his opinion
on some improvements he was contemplating.

"You're only wasting your time," Mrs. Sharp had remarked grimly. "There
ain't going to be anything done to any of them barns before I get a
lean-to on the house. You'd think even a man would know that a house
that's all right for two gets a little small for seven," she added,
scornfully, to Nora.

"Are there seven of you?"

"Me and Sid and five little ones. If that don't make seven, I've
forgotten all the 'rithmetic I ever learned," said Mrs. Sharp briefly.
"And let me tell you, you who're just starting in, that having children
out here on the prairie half the time with no proper care, and
particularly in winter, when maybe you're snowed up and the doctor can't
get to you, ain't my idea of a bank holiday."

"I shouldn't think it would be," said Nora, sincerely shocked, although
she found it difficult to hide a smile at her visitor's comparison;
bank holidays being among her most horrid recollections.

Mrs. Sharp, despite a rather emphatic manner which softened noticeably
as her visit progressed, turned out to be a stout, red-faced woman of
middle age who seemed to be troubled with a chronic form of asthma. She
was as unmistakably English as her husband. But like him, she had lost
much of her native accent, although occasionally one caught a faint
trace of the Cockney. She had two rather keen brown eyes which, as she
talked, took in the room to its smallest detail.

"Well, I declare, I think you've done wonders considering you've only
had a day and not used to work like this," she said heartily. "When Sid
told me that Frank was bringing home a wife I said to myself: 'Well, I
don't envy her _her_ job; comin' to a shack that ain't been lived in for
nigh unto six months and when it was, with only a man runnin' it.'"

"You don't seem to have a very high opinion of men's ability in the
domestic line," said Nora with a smile.

"I can tell you just how high it is," said Mrs. Sharp with decision. "I
would just as soon think of consultin' little Sid--an' he's goin' on
three--about the housekeepin' as I would his father. It ain't a man's
work. Why should he know anything about it?"

"Still," demurred Nora, "lots of men look after themselves somehow."

"Somehow's just the word; they never get beyond that. Of course I knew
Frank would be sure to marry some day. And with his good looks it's a
wonder he didn't do so long ago. Most girls is so crazy about a