'Thar! I told th' ole woman that spruce beer ain't so good as usual this brewin'.'
'Good! the vilest compound. A fir-tree steeped in a stagnant pool!' exclaimed the irate captain, with considerable warmth of colouring. 'Bring me something, sirrah, to take away the odious taste--anything you like.'
Mr. Bunting obeyed with alacrity. Arthur left father and son over their pipes and glasses, and went outside to join Miss Armytage and Jay, who had declined various overtures to enter the store, and were the cynosure of all eyes in the 'Corner' as they walked to and fro on the stumpless strip of ground in the place--a fair child and a pale girl. Presently forth came the captain.
'Edith, my dear,' he said blandly, 'I may be detained here for half an hour; I find that mine host, Mr. Bunting, has a very exact knowledge of the locality to which we are going. I think you both might be going on with the waggon; your brother will follow in a minute or so when his smoke is finished, he says. Driver, you may go forward; _au revoir_, Edith.'
He kissed the tips of his fingers to his daughter gallantly, and passed into the bar again with a jaunty air.
'If you will allow me to accompany you,' said Arthur, seeing that she hesitated, 'you will do me a kindness, for I have rather a large pack to carry going home; I can rest it on the waggon; and Daisy Burn is more than half-way to Cedar Creek.'
'Did I not tell you we would find out Arthur and Robert?' said the child Jay, with an ecstatic clasp of her fingers upon young Wynn's. 'You said you were afraid we should have no friends in the woods, but I knew that God would not let us be so forsaken as that.'
And the three walked on into the long vista of the concession line.
A summer more glorious than our settlers could have imagined, followed on the steps of the tardy spring. What serene skies--what brilliant sunshine--what tropical wealth of verdure! At every pore the rich earth burst forth into fruit and flower. Two months after the grass had been sunk deep beneath the snow, sheets of strawberries were spread in the woods, an extemporized feast.
One might think that the cottage at Cedar Creek had also bloomed under the fair weather; for when July--hottest of Canadian months--came, the dingy wooden walls had assumed a dazzling white, with a roof so grey that the shingles might have been veritable slates. Resemblance to the lime-washed houses of home was Robert's fancy; which, in Zack Bunting's mind, was a perverted taste, as he recommended a brilliant green groundwork, picked out with yellow, such canary-bird costume being favourite in Yankee villages.