"Well," answered Thorne reflectively, "I like the Colonial, and especially the Westerner, though he's rather fond of insisting on his superiority over the rest of mankind. One gets used to this, but it now and then grows galling when he compares himself with the folks who come out from the old country. On the day in question the trouble arose from a repetition of the usual formula that if it wasn't for the ocean they'd have the whole scum of Europe coming over. I, however, shook hands with the man who said it not long afterward, and he told me that after I had gone, which was how he expressed it, they sat down and laughed until they ached, thinking what the wheat broker, who was out on business, would say when he saw his office."
Alison was genuinely amused and she ventured another question.
"Did you leave your situations in England in the same fashion?"
Alison turned the conversation into what promised to be a safer channel, and they drove along very slowly all morning. When they set out again after a lengthy stop at noon Thorne asked her if she would mind walking for a while, as Volador was becoming very lame. He added that he would make for an outlying homestead, where they would find entertainment, instead of Graham's Bluff, and that they should reach Mrs. Hunter's on the following day.
It was six o'clock in the evening when they arrived at a frame house which stood, roofed with cedar shingles, in the shelter of a big birch bluff. There was a very rude sod-built stable, a small log barn, and a great pile of straw, which appeared to be hollow inside and used as a store of some kind. A middle-aged man with a good-humored look met them at the door, and his wife greeted Alison in a kindly fashion when Thorne explained the cause of their visit. Indeed, Alison was pleased with the woman's face and manner, though, like many of the small wheat-growers' wives, she looked a little worn and faded. Though the men toil strenuously on the newly broken prairie, the heavier burden not infrequently falls to the woman's share.
Farquhar, their host, went out to work after supper but came back a little before dusk, and when they sat out on the stoop together, Thorne got his banjo and sang twice at Mrs. Farquhar's request; once some amusing jingle he had heard in Winnipeg, and afterward "Mandalay."