ally.

"What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that
kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the
weed!" She had to stop again for a moment. "I can't bear any more. If we
lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back
home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do
from the beginning. But Sid--Sid always had his heart set on farming."

"But you couldn't go back now," said Nora, her face aglow, "you
couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after
the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in
England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebody else.
And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time
you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you
proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your
face."

"You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children
came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was
all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd
never left home and come to this country, that I do!"

"How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy
they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able
to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd
never have had a chance back home. You know that."

"Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that.
Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay
for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid."

"Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?" said
Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs.
Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize,
even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had
come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself,
against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser
degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her
warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.

"It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that," Nora went
on, her eyes dark with earnestness.

Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank
stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head
slightly. He