riendship, for the Swede on the other side of the farm. He
liked them the better for that. If a man or woman lived in a community he
or she should be a part of that community. Hugh Noland never doubted that
the friendly interest he had witnessed was the regularly established
course of action and that it was mutual in the household. Coming into the
household at this transition point, he was to make many such mistakes in
his estimates.

John Hunter was at the side gate to assist his wife and baby out of the
sled. He left Elizabeth to carry Jack to the house and went to the barn to
help Noland put the team away. This man, who took milking as a lark, and
all farm work as a thing to be desired, and yet was a gentleman, was to
John Hunter, who scorned these things as beneath himself, an anomaly. It
had never occurred to John that labour of that sort could have dignity,
nor that a man could choose it as a livelihood unless driven to it. It had
never occurred to him that if driven to it one should enter into it as a
real participant. To him it was a thing to endure for a time and never
refer to after it could be put behind him. The beauty of the dawn, the
pleasant odours of new-mown hay, the freshness of the crisp air, the
association with the living creatures about him, the joys of a clean life,
all escaped him. Hugh Noland had enumerated these things, and many more,
while they had worked together that afternoon, and John Hunter accepted
the enumeration, not because it was fundamentally true, but because it was
the estimate of a cultured and well-educated man.

John Hunter had been vexed at Elizabeth for the sangfroid with which she
had walked away from established custom in ordering the team prepared for
her to be taken to Nathan's, but with Noland present he had accepted it
without remark. Here was a man before whom John would always, but
instinctively rather than premeditatively, endeavour to show his best
side.

Hugh Noland went to the house with John, talking farm work and prices of
produce as if they were matters of pleasant as well as necessary
importance, and he set John to talking in his best vein and without
superciliousness; he had the faculty of bringing out the best in the
people he met. He brought some of his books--he had stopped at the
Chamberlain homestead for his trunk on their return that evening--and
added them to those already on the Hunter shelves. While arranging them,
he sat on the floor before the bo