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Sally, however, drove right through the settlement and back outside it before she could check the horses, and she had just pulled them up in front of the wooden hotel when Hawtrey reached it. He stood beside the waggon holding up his hand to her, and Sally, who laughed, dropped bodily into his arms, which was, as he recognised, a thing that Agatha certainly would not have done.
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.
Hawtrey was within a pace or two of it when Sally recognised him. "Keep off," she said, "you can't lead them. They don't want to cross the track, but they've got to if I pull the jaws off them." This was more forcible than elegant, and the shrill harshness of the girl's voice jarred upon Hawtrey, though he was getting accustomed to Sally's phraseology.
Even then, however, stirred as she was, she was conscious that all the tenderness she had once felt for him had gone. The duty, however, remained, and with a little effort she turned to him again. "Oh!" she said, "I'm so sorry." Hawtrey smiled. "I really don't think I deserve a very great deal of pity. As I have said, I'll probably come out all right next year if I can only keep expenses down."
It isn't as if she was your friend." "But she is if she's yours and Colin's. I mean I want her to be.... I think I'd better call on these Corbett and Hawtrey people and just show them how we care about her. Then cut them dead afterwards if they aren't decent to her. It'll be far more telling than if I began by being rude.... Only, Jerrold, how absurd I don't know Anne. She hasn't called yet."
"Well," she said drily, "I would like to think you were right about Harry; it would be a relief to me." Hawtrey, who said nothing further, presently drove away, and soon after he did so Agatha approached Mrs. Hastings. "There's something I must ask you," she said. "Has Gregory consented to take charge of Wyllard's farm?" "He has," said her companion in her dryest tone.
Hawtrey met her gaze for a moment, and then made a sign of acquiescence as he turned his eyes away. He recognised that this was a new Agatha, one whose will was stronger than his. Yet he was half-astonished that he had yielded so readily. "Well," he said, "if it must be, I can only give way to you, but I must be free to come over here whenever I wish." Then a thought seemed to strike him.
In the meanwhile, it happened that Edmonds, the mortgage broker, drove over to the Range, and found Hawtrey waiting him in Wyllard's room. It was early in the evening, and he could see the hired men busy outside tossing prairie hay from the waggons into the great barn.
Then Sally walked into the room. Edmonds was disconcerted, but bowed, and then sat down again, quietly determined to wait, for he discovered that there was hostility in the swift glance she flashed at him. "That's quite a smart team you were driving, Miss Creighton," he remarked. Sally, who disregarded this, turned to Hawtrey. "What's he doing here?" she asked.
Hastings sat still in a reflective mood. "If she begins to compare him with Hawtrey, there can be only one result," she said. The fog had almost gone next morning, and pale sunshine streamed down upon a a froth-flecked sea. A bitter wind, however, still came out of the hazy north, and the Scarrowmania's plates were crusted with ice where the highest crests of the tumbling seas reached them.
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