"Oh," she said, "your place is quite big enough if you"d only take hold and run it as it ought to be run. You could surely do it, Gregory, if you tried."
The man"s resistance grew feebler, as it usually did when his prudence was at variance with his desires. Sally"s words were in this case wholly guileless, as he recognised, and they stirred him. He said nothing, however, and she spoke again.
"Isn"t it worth while, though there are things you would have to give up?" she said. "You couldn"t go away and waste your dollars in Winnipeg every now and then."
Hawtrey laughed. "No," he admitted; "I suppose if I meant to make anything of the place that couldn"t be done. Still, you see, it"s horribly lonely sitting by oneself beside the stove in the long winter nights. I wouldn"t want to go to Winnipeg if I had only somebody to keep me company."
He turned towards her suddenly with decision in his face, and Sally lowered her eyes.
"Don"t you think you could get anybody if you tried?" she asked.
"The trouble," said Hawtrey gravely, "is that I have so little to offer them. It"s a poor place, and I"m almost afraid, Sally, that I"m rather a poor farmer. As you have once or twice pointed out, I don"t stay with things. Still, it might be different if there was any particular reason why I should."
He rose, and crossing the room, stood close beside her chair. "Sally,"
he added, "would you be afraid to take hold and see what you could make of the place and me? Perhaps you could make something, though it would probably be very hard work, my dear."
The blood surged into the girl"s face, and she looked up at him with open triumph in her eyes. It was her hour, and Sally, as it happened, was not afraid of anything.
"Oh!" she said; "you really want me?"
"Yes," said Hawtrey quietly; "I think I have wanted you for ever so long, though I did not know it until lately."
"Then," she said, "I"ll do what I can, Gregory."
Hawtrey bent his head and kissed her with a deference he had not expected to feel, for there was something in the girl"s simplicity and the completeness of her surrender which, though the thing seemed astonishing, laid a restraint on him. Then, as he sat down on the arm of her chair with a hand upon her shoulder, he was more astonished still, for she quietly made it clear that she expected a good deal from him. For one thing, he realised that she meant him to take and keep a foremost place among his neighbours, and, though Sally had not the gift of clear and imaginative expression, it became apparent that this was less for her own sake than his. She was, with somewhat crude forcefulness, trying to rouse a sense of responsibility in the man, to incite him to resolute action and wholesome restraint, and, as he remembered what he had hitherto thought of her, a salutary sense of confusion crept upon him.
She seemed to recognise it, for at length she glanced up at him sharply.
"What is it, Gregory? Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.
Hawtrey smiled in a rather curious fashion. Hitherto she had made her appeal through his senses to one side of his nature only. There was no doubt on that point, but now it seemed there were in her qualities he had never suspected. She had desired him as a husband, but it was becoming clear that she would not be content with the mere possession of him. Sally, it seemed, had wider ideas in her mind, and, though the thing seemed almost ludicrous, she wanted to be proud of him.
"My dear," he said, "I can"t quite tell you--but you have made me rather badly ashamed. In some respects, I"m afraid it"s a very rash thing you are going to do."
She looked at him with candid perplexity, and then appeared to dismiss the subject with a smile.
"There is so much I want to say, and it mayn"t be so easy--afterwards,"
she said. "It"s a pity the train starts so soon."
"We can get over that difficulty, anyway," said Hawtrey. "I"ll come on as far as I can with you, and get back from one of the way stations by the Pacific express."
Sally made no objections, and drawing a little closer to him she talked on in a low voice earnestly.
CHAPTER XXII.
A PAINFUL REVELATION.
A sprinkle of snow was driving down the unpaved street before the bitter wind, when Mrs. Hastings came out of a store in the settlement and handed Sproatly, who was waiting close by, several big packages.
"You can put them into the waggon, and tell Jake we"ll want the team as soon as supper"s over," she said. "We"re going to stay with Mrs.
Ormond to-night, and I don"t want to get there too late."
Sproatly took the parcels, and Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha, who stood a pace or two behind her with Winifred.
"Now," she said, "if there"s nothing else you want to buy we"ll go across to the hotel."
They reached it a few minutes later, and were standing in a big and rather comfortless room when Sproatly rejoined them.
"This place is quite shivery," said Mrs. Hastings. "They generally have the stove lighted in the little room along the corridor. Go and see, Jim."
Sproatly went out, and, as it happened, he was wearing gum-boots, which make very little noise. He proceeded along a dark corridor, and then stopped abruptly when he had almost reached a partly-open door, for he could see into a lighted room. Hawtrey was sitting near the stove inside it on the arm of Sally"s chair.
Then, though he was not greatly astonished, Sproatly drew back a pace or two into the shadow, for it became evident that there were only two courses open to him. He could judiciously announce his presence by making the door rattle, and then go in and mention as casually as possible that Mrs. Hastings and Agatha were in the hotel. He felt that he ought to do it, but there was the difficulty that he could not warn Hawtrey without embarra.s.sing Sally. Sproatly pursed his face up in honest perplexity as it became evident that the situation was a delicate one, and then decided on the alternative. He would go back quietly, and keep Mrs. Hastings out of the room if it could be done.
"I think you would be just as comfortable where you are," he informed her when he joined the others.
"I"m rather doubtful," said Mrs. Hastings. "Wasn"t the stove lighted?"
"Yes," said Sproatly, "I fancy it was."
"But I sent you to make sure."
"The fact is I didn"t go in," said Sproatly, uneasily. "There"s somebody in the room already."
"Any of the boys would go out if they knew we wanted it."
"Oh yes," said Sproatly. "Still, you see, it"s only a small room, and one of them has been smoking."
Mrs. Hastings flashed a keen glance at him, and then smiled in a manner he did not like. It suggested that while she yielded to his objections in the meanwhile she had by no means abandoned the subject.
"Well," she said, "what shall we do until supper? This stove won"t draw properly, and I don"t feel inclined to sit shivering here."
Then Sproatly was seized by what proved to be a singularly unfortunate inspiration.
"It"s really not snowing much, and we"ll go down to the depot and watch the Atlantic express come in," he suggested. "It"s one of the things everybody does."
This was, as a matter of fact, correct. There are not many amus.e.m.e.nts open to the inhabitants of the smaller settlements along the railroad track, and the arrival of the infrequent trains is a source of unflagging interest to most of them. Mrs. Hastings fell in with the suggestion, and Sproatly was congratulating himself upon his diplomacy when Agatha stopped as they reached the door of the hotel.
"Oh," she said, "I"ve only brought one of my mittens."
"I"ll go back for the other," said Sproatly promptly.
"You don"t know where I left it."
"Then I"ll lend you one of mine. It will certainly go on," the man persisted.