eady noticed him,
because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs--a tall, sallow Englishman
of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
the cabin had mentioned it--- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
turned his mind again in that direction.

"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
deck.

The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.

"What kind of place did it seem to you?"

"Jolly rotten."

Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
starry glance--an invitation, or an incitement--that impelled him to
continue.

"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."

The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."

"May I ask if you saw any?"

"None fit for a white man."

"My husband means none fit for a--gentleman. I liked the place."

From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.

"I've heard of a very good house out there--Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
happen to know anything about them?"

"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."

"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
there was anything he could do. Fancy!"

"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.