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tting toil from which one desisted only long enough to eat and sleep, and he was one of the workers. Mrs. Gladwyne had been right--it was no place for this delicately nurtured girl with her sensitiveness and artistic faculties. "For those who can live as you live, it would be hard to find the equal of this part of England," he said. "But I'm not sure you can keep it very much longer as it is." "Why?" she asked. It was a relief to talk of matters of minor interest, for he dare not let his thoughts dwell too much on the subject that was nearest them. "Well," he replied, "there's the economic pressure, for one thing; the growth of your cities; the demand for food. I see land lying almost idle that could be made productive at a very moderate outlay. Our people often give nearly as much as it's worth here for no better soil." "But how do they make it pay?" He laughed. "The secret is that they expect very little--enough to eat, a shack they build with their own hands to sleep in--and they're willing to work sixteen hours out of the twenty-four." "They can't do so in winter." "The hours are shorter, but where the winter's hardest--on the open middle prairie--the work's more severe. There the little man spends a good deal of his time hauling home stove-wood or building-logs for new stables or barns. He has often to drive several leagues with the thermometer well below zero before he can find a bluff with large enough trees. In the Pacific Slope forests, where it's warmer, work goes on much as usual. The bush rancher spends his days chopping big trees in the rain and his nights making odd things--furniture, wagon-poles, new doors for his outbuildings. What you would call necessary leisure is unknown." This was not exaggeration; but he spoke of it from a desire to support his resolution by emphasizing the sternest aspects of western life. It had others more alluring: there were men who dwelt more or less at their ease; but they were by no means numerous, and the toilers--in city office, lonely bush, or sawmill--were consumed by or driven into a feverish activity. As one of them, it was his manifest duty to leave this English girl in her sheltered surroundings. There was, however, one remote but alluring possibility that made this a little easier--he might, after all, win enough to surround her with some luxury and cultured friends in one of the cities of the Pacific coast. Though they differed from those in
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