Stanley Carruthers lit his cigarette and watched her
with unconcealed admiration.
As the Arts and Crafts had predicted, the newspapers gave considerable
space to their open meeting, and the Alberta author came in for a large
share of the reporters' finest spasms. It was the chance of a lifetime
--here was local color--human interest--romance--thrills! Good old
phrases, clover-scented and rosy-hued, that had lain in cold storage
for years, were brought out and used with conscious pride.
There was one paper which boldly hinted at what it called her
"_mesalliance_," and drew a lurid picture of her domestic unhappiness,
"so bravely borne." All the gossip of the Convention was in it
intensified and exaggerated--conjectures set down as known truths--the
idle chatter of idle women crystallized in print!
And of this paper a copy was sent by some unknown person to James
Dawson, Auburn, Alberta.
* * * * *
The rain was falling at Auburn, Alberta, with the dreary insistence of
unwelcome harvest rain. Just a quiet drizzle--plenty more where this
came from--no haste, no waste. It soaked the fields, keeping green the
grain which should be ripening in a clear sun. Kate Dawson had been
gone a week, and it would still be a week before she came back. Just a
week--seven days. Jim Dawson went over them in his mind as he drove the
ten miles over the rain-soaked roads to Auburn to get his daily letter.
Every day she had written to him long letters, full of vital interest
to him.
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