"That is all I ask until I have won my spurs," he said. "Just now I am only the squire of low degree."
Grace said nothing, for the door opened and the major came in.
It was a bitterly cold night, and Hetty Leger sat close to the fire which crackled on the big hearth in the bakery shanty. It flung an uncertain radiance and pungent aromatic odours about the little room, but there was no other light. Kerosene is unpleasantly apt to impart its characteristic flavour to provisions when jolted for leagues in company with them on the same pack-saddle, and the bringing of stores of any kind into the Green River country was then a serious undertaking. Tom Leger sat by the little table, and Sewell lay upon a kind of ottoman ingeniously extemporized out of spruce-twigs and provision bags.
It was significant that they were assembled in what had been Hetty's private apartment, for the bakery had grown, and there were two other rooms attached to it now. Leger had also struck gold a little while ago, and there was no longer any necessity for Hetty to continue baking, though she did so. She said she had grown used to it, and would sooner have something to do; but it had seemed to Leger that while everything was done with her customary neatness and system there was a change in her, and he fancied she did her work more to keep herself occupied than because she took pleasure in it. It had not been so once. In fact, the change had only become perceptible after Ingleby left the bakery; but Leger was wise in some respects and made no sign that he noticed this.
On that particular evening Hetty had not displayed her usual tranquillity of temper, and she turned to her brother with a little shiver.
"Can't you put on some more wood? It's disgustingly cold," she said. "If I'd known they had weather like this here I'd have stayed in Vancouver."
Leger remembered that she had once professed herself perfectly contented with the Green River country, but he did not think it advisable to mention the fact. He rose and flung an armful of wood upon the fire, and then stood still smiling.
"You know you can go back there and stay through the winter, if you would like to," he said.
"That's nonsense," said Hetty. "How could I go myself? You and your friends haven't made everybody nice to everybody yet. I'm not going, anyway, and if you worry me I'll be cross."