"Yesterday morning," he says, "as I came along here a little after sunrise, there was a thin fog lying only two or three feet deep, close to the level ground as far as you could see, hiding the whole prairie, and making it look for all the world like a beautiful lake, with every here and there a green grove standing out of it like a real little island."
She replies that she used to see it so in her younger days. The Acadian accent is in her words. She lifts her black eyes, looks toward Carancro, and is silent.
"You're thinking of the changes," says her escort.
"Yass; _'tis_ so. Dey got twenty time' many field' like had befo'. Peop' don't raise cattl' no more; raise crop'. Dey say even dat land changin'."
"I dunno. I dunno if _'tis_ so. Dey say prairie risin' mo' higher every year. I dunno if _'tis_ so. I t'ink dat land don't change much; but de peop', yass."
"Still, the changes are mostly good changes," responds the male rider. "'Tisn't the prairie, but the people that are rising. They've got the schoolhouse, and the English language, and a free paid labor system, and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and sewing-machines, and melodeons, and Horsford's Acid Phosphate; and they've caught the spirit of progress!"
"Yass, _'tis_ so. Dawn't see nobody seem satisfied--since de army--since de railroad."
"Well, that's right enough; they oughtn't to be satisfied. You're not satisfied, are you? And yet you've never done so well before as you have this season. I wish I could say the same for the 'Album of Universal Information;' but I can't. I tell you that, Madame Beausoleil; I wouldn't tell anybody else."
Zoséphine responds with a dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude, discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her father's small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the sagacity of Mr. Tarbox's advice in pecuniary matters, and once and once again, when he has told her quietly of some little operation into which he and the ex-governor--who "thinks the world of me," he says--were going to dip, and she has accepted his invitation to venture in also, to the extent of a single thousand dollars, the money has come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale of all her prairie lands to her former kinsmen-in-law, which brought her out here yesterday and lets her return this morning, is made upon his suggestion, and is so advantageous that somehow, she doesn't know why, she almost fears it isn't fair to the other side. The fact is, the country is passing from the pastoral to the agricultural life, the prairies are being turned into countless farms, and the people are getting wealth. So explains Mr. Tarbox, whose happening to come along this morning bound in her direction is pure accident--pure accident.