"I fancy," observed Laura half wistfully, "that is, in several respects, fortunate."

Then she went on again, and though Gordon felt exceedingly compa.s.sionate, he frowned and closed one hand.

"It's a sure thing I'll have to tell Waynefleet what kind of a man he is," he said.

CHAPTER IX

GORDON SPEAKS HIS MIND

It was a nipping morning, and the clearing outside the ranch was flecked with patches of frozen snow, when Waynefleet sat shivering in a hide chair beside the stove. The broken viands upon the table in front of him suggested that he had just made a tolerable breakfast, but his pose was expressive of limp resignation, and one could have fancied from the look in his thin face that he was feeling very sorry for himself. Self-pity, in fact, was rather a habit of his, and, perhaps, because of it, he had usually very little pity to spare for anybody else. He looked up when, flushed and gasping, his daughter came in with two heavy pails of water. She shivered visibly.

"It would be a favour if you would shut that door as soon as you can,"

said Waynefleet. "As I fancy I have mentioned, this cold goes right through me. It occurred to me that you might have come in a little earlier to see if I was getting my breakfast properly."

Laura, who glanced at the table, thought that he had acquitted himself reasonably well, but she refrained from pointing out the fact, and, after shutting the door, crossed the room to her store-cupboard, and took out a can of fruit which she had set aside for another purpose.

Waynefleet watched her open it and made a little sign of impatience.

"You are very clumsy this morning," he said.

The girl's hands were wet and stiff with cold, but she quietly laid another plate upon the table before she answered him.

"Charly is busy in the slashing, and I don't want to take him away, but there are those logs in the wet patch that ought to be hauled out now the ground is hard," she said. "I suppose you don't feel equal to doing it to-day?"

"No," said Waynefleet with querulous incisiveness, "it is quite out of the question. Do I look like a man who could reasonably be expected to undertake anything of that kind just now?"

It occurred to Laura that he did not look as if there was very much the matter with him, and she stood still a minute considering. As Gordon had said, it was she who managed the ranch, and she recognized that it was desirable that the trees in question should be dragged out of the soft ground while the frost lasted. Still, there was the baking and washing, and it would be late at night before she could accomplish half she wished to do, if she undertook the task in question. While she thought over it her father spoke again.

"I wish you would sit down," he said. "I feel I must have quietness, and your restless habits jar upon me horribly."

That decided her, and slipping into her own room, she put on an old blanket coat, and went out quietly. She walked through the orchard to the little log stable where the working oxen stood, and, after patting the patient beasts, shackled a heavy chain to the yoke she laid upon their brawny necks. Then, picking up a handspike, she led them out, and for an hour walked beside them, tapping them with a long pointed stick, while they dragged the big logs out of the swamp. Now and then it taxed all her strength to lift the thinner end of a log on the chain-sling with a handspike, but she contrived to do it until at length one heavier than the others proved too much for her. She could hear the ringing of the hired man's axe across the clearing, but there was a great deal for him to do, and, taking up the handspike again, she strained at it.

She heard footsteps behind her, and she straightened herself suddenly.

She turned and saw Gordon watching her with a curious smile. Tall and straight and supple, with a ruddy, half-guilty glow on her face, she stood near the middle of the little gap in the Bush, the big dappled oxen close at her side. The wintry sunlight, which struck upon her, tinted the old blanket dress a shining ochre, and the loose tress of red-gold hair, which had escaped from beneath her little fur cap, struck a dominant tone of glowing colour among the pale reds and russets of the fir-trunks and withered fern.

Gordon shook his head reproachfully. "Sit down a minute or two, and I'll heave that log on to the sling," he said. "This is not the kind of thing you ought to be doing."

Laura, who was glad of the excuse, sat down on one of the logs, while the man leaned against a fir and gravely regarded her.

"The work must be done by somebody, and my father is apparently not very well again," she explained. "Charly has his hands full in the slashing. We must get it cleaned up, if it is to be ploughed this spring."

"Nasmyth contrived to look after all these things. Why didn't you keep him? The man didn't want to go away."

The colour deepened in Laura's face, and Gordon, who saw it, made a sign of comprehension. "Well," he added, "I suppose that wasn't a thing one could expect you to tell me, though I don't quite see why you shouldn't think of yourself now and then. You know it wasn't on your own account you sent him away."

"How does this concern you?" she asked.

Gordon flung one hand out. "Ah," he said, "how does it concern me?"

Then he seemed to lay a restraint upon himself. "Well, it does in one sense, anyway. After all, I am a doctor, and a friend of yours, and I'm going to warn you against attempting things women weren't meant to do. If that doesn't prove efficacious, I'll say a word or two to Nasmyth, and you'll have him back here again. It's a sure thing your father would be glad to get him."

"If you do, I shall never forgive you," warned Laura, with a flash in her eyes.

She was sorry she had spoken so plainly when she saw that Gordon winced. She had guessed more or less correctly what the man felt for her, and she had no wish to pain him. Except for that, however, the admission she had made did not greatly matter, since she fancied that he was quite aware why she had sent Nasmyth away. Gordon changed the subject abruptly.

"There are very few of those blanket dresses this side of the Rockies," he said. "You probably got it back East."

The girl's eyes had a wistful look as she answered: "We spent our first winter in Montreal, and we had some friends who were very kind to us. I like to look back upon those first few months in Canada."

Gordon nodded. "Oh, yes," he replied. "I know--sleigh-rides, snowshoe meets, skating-rinks, toboggan-slides. Quite as lively as a London season, and considerably more invigorating; I guess you've been through that, too. In one way it's a pity you didn't stay in Montreal."

He saw her sudden embarra.s.sment, and fancied that she could have stayed there, if she had wished to do so, but he felt that he must speak frankly, and he shook his head severely.

"Do you never think of your own advantage at all?" he inquired. "Have you none of the ambitions that most women seem to have?"

"Aren't you forgetting?" Laura asked with sudden quietness. "My father found it would not be advisable for him to settle in Montreal--for the same reason that afterwards led us to leave Victoria--and we went West. Perhaps he could have faced the trouble and lived it down, but I could not leave him alone."

Gordon sat silent a moment or two. He knew, though she very rarely mentioned it, how heavy was the burden that had been laid upon her, and he was divided between a great pity for her and anger against her father. Then he rose slowly to his feet.

"Miss Waynefleet," he said, "if I have said anything that hurt you, I'm sorry, but there are times when I must talk. I feel I have to. In the meanwhile I'll heave those logs up on a skid so that you can slip the chain round them."

For the next half-hour he exerted himself savagely, and when at last he dropped the handspike, his face was damp with perspiration. He smiled grimly when Laura, who had hauled one or two of the logs away, came back tapping the plodding oxen.

"Now," he said, "I'm going in to see your father. Custer happened to tell me he was feeling low again, and it's going to afford me a good deal of pleasure to prescribe for him."

He swung off his wide hat, and, when he turned away, Laura wondered with a few misgivings what had brought the little snap into his eyes.

Three or four minutes later he entered the house, where Waynefleet lay beside the stove with a cigar in his hand.

"I ran across Custer at the settlement, and I came along to see how you were keeping," said Gordon.

Waynefleet held out a cigar-box. "Make yourself comfortable," he answered hospitably. "We'll have dinner a little earlier than usual."

The sight of the label on the box came near rousing Gordon to an outbreak of indignation. "I'm not going to stay," he declared. "It seems to me Miss Waynefleet has about enough to do already."

He saw Waynefleet raise his eyebrows, and he added: "I guess it's not worth while troubling to point out that it's not my affair. Now, if you'll get ahead with your symptoms."

Waynefleet looked hard at him for a moment. The older man was not accustomed to being addressed in that brusque fashion, and it jarred upon him, but, as a matter of fact, he was not feeling well, and, as he not infrequently pointed out, he had discovered that one had to put up with many unpleasant things in that barbarous country. He described his symptoms feelingly, and was rather indignant when Gordon expressed neither astonishment nor sympathy.

"That's all right," said Gordon. "The thing's quite plain--especially the general la.s.situde you complain of. The trouble is that if you don't make an effort it's going to become chronic."

Again Waynefleet looked at him in astonishment, for Gordon's tone was very suggestive.

"Yes," added the medical adviser, "it's a complaint a good many men, who haven't been raised to work, are afflicted with. Well, I'll mix you up a tonic, and you'll drive down for it yourself. The thing won't be half as efficacious if you send the hired man. Then you'll set to every morning soon as breakfast's over, and do a couple of hours'

smart chopping for a week. By that time you'll find it easy, and you can go on an hour or two in the afternoon. n.o.body round here will recognize you, if you keep it up for the next three months."

Waynefleet's thin face grew red, but Gordon's imperturbable demeanour restrained him from betraying his indignation.