"Yes," she said, "I have come back. It was very pleasant in the city,
and they were all kind to me, but I think, henceforward, I would sooner
stay with you on the prairie."
Colonel Barrington patted the hand he drew through his arm, and there
was a very kindly smile in his eyes as they left the station and
crossed the track towards a little, and by no means very comfortable,
wooden hotel. He stopped outside it.
"I want to see the horses put in and get our mail," he said. "Mrs.
Jasper expects you and will have tea ready."
He disappeared behind the wooden building, and his niece standing a
moment on the veranda watched the long train roll away down the faint
blur of track that ran west to the farthest verge of the great white
wilderness. Then with a little impatient gesture she went into the
hotel.
"That is another leaf turned down, and there is no use looking back,
but I wonder what is written on the rest," she said.
Twenty minutes later she watched Colonel Barrington cross the street
with a bundle of letters in his hand. She fancied that his step was
slower than it had been, and that he seemed a trifle preoccupied and
embarrassed, but he spoke with quiet kindliness when he handed her into
the waiting sleigh, and the girl's spirits rose as they swung smoothly
northwards behind two fast horses across the prairie. It stretched
away before her, ridged here and there with a dusky birch bluff or
willow grove under a vault of crystalline blue.
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