say," he said, his eye taking in the bright little room, "this is a
swell shack you've got."

"I've tried to make it look pretty and homelike."

"Helloa, what's this!" said Marsh, whose eye had fallen for the first
time on the bowl of flowers.

"Aren't they pretty? I've only just picked them. They're mustard
flowers."

"We call them weeds. Have you much of it?"

"Oh, yes; lots. Why?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Eddie tells me you're going home."

"Yes," said Reggie, seating himself and carefully pulling up his
trousers. "I'm fed up for my part with God's own country. Nature never
intended me to be an agricultural laborer."

"No? And what are you going to do now?"

"Loaf!" Mr. Hornby's tone expressed profound conviction.

"Won't you get bored?" smiled Nora.

"I'm never bored. It amuses me to watch other people do things. I should
hate my fellow-creatures to be idle."

"I should think one could do more with life than lounge around clubs and
play cards with people who don't play as well as oneself."

Hornby gave her a quick ironic look. "I quite agree with you," he said
with his most serious air. "I've been thinking things over very
seriously this winter. I'm going to look out for a middle-aged widow
with money who'll adopt me."

"I recall that you have decided views about the White Man's Burden."

"All I want is to get through life comfortably. I don't mean to do a
stroke more work than I'm obliged to, and I'm going to have the very
best time I can."

"I'm sure you will," said Nora, smiling.

But her smile was a little mechanical. Somehow she could no longer be
genuinely amused at such sentiments which, in spite of his airy manner,
she knew to be real. And yet, it was not so very long ago that she would
have thought them perfectly natural in a man of his position. Somehow,
her old standards were not as fixed as she had thought them.

"The moment I get back to London," continued Hornby imperturbably, "I'm
going to stand myself a bang-up dinner at the Ritz. Then I shall go and
see some musical comedy at the Gaiety, and after that, I'll have a
slap-up supper at Romano's. England, with all thy faults, I love thee
still!" he finished piously.

"I suppose it's being alone with the prairie all these months," said
Nora, more to herself than him; "but things that used to seem clever and
funny--well, I see them altogether differently now."

"I'm afraid you don't altogether approve of me," he said, quite
unabashed.