ike twinkle in his eyes.
Seaforth had been married recently, and his wife had called in to see,
so she told Alton, that he was not working him too hard.

"You will give Mrs. Charley some tea," said Alton. "Your husband,
madam, has been brought up well, but there was a time when I had real
trouble in teaching him. Forel, you'll find some ice and soda yonder
as well as the other things."

Nellie Seaforth laughed a little as she thrust the cup away. "No," she
said; "I know where that tea comes from, and I would sooner have some
ice and soda with out the other things. Have the strawberries gone up,
Harry?"

Alton nodded. "That's a fact, and I am very glad," he said. "You see,
we are sending out about a ton of them every day, and there are none to
equal ours in the Dominion. Still, if Charley wasn't so lazy he'd give
you some. Can't you find that ice, Forel? There was a big lump
yesterday."

"That is quite possible," said Forel dryly, "but it has gone, and it is
apparently running out of your plans and estimates now."

"Then you will have to fall back upon Horton's tea," said Alton,
smiling. "Nobody knows where he gets it from except that it isn't
China, but he seems to think it's my duty to buy it from him, and the
rasp of it brings the bush back to me. Makes one smell the cedars, and
see the lake flashing, and I'm very tired of the city."

Mrs. Seaforth laughed as she glanced at the bottles Forel was pitching
out of a box, for as yet he had not found one with anything in it.

"Have you a mineral water factory at Somasco, too?" she said.

"Not yet," said Alton gravely. "But we may have by and by, though some
of my partners would have more use for a distillery. We're going to
have everything that will pay, but we've been too busy making roads
lately."

Forel stood up, looking a little more thoughtful. "You are, at any
rate, running up a confoundedly long bill," he said. "You will get
very few new dresses, Mrs. Seaforth, unless you make your husband stop
him. Of course you heard nothing, Alton, from the roads and trails?"

Alton laughed softly. "That's where you're wrong. I wrote them
wanting to know if they thought it my duty to open up the country for
them, and I got a letter that the affair is receiving consideration.
If the bush country members can get the new appropriation through, the
surveyor's going up to look at what we've done."

"Effrontery is the thing that pays," said Forel. "But h