"I don't, though I have felt that you ought to have done it," and Sproatly, who paused a moment, turned towards Agatha with a little whimsical inclination. "The professional badinage of an unlicensed dealer in patent medicines may now and then mercifully cover a good deal of embarrassment. Miss Ismay has brought something pleasantly characteristic of the Old Country along with her."
His hostess disregarded the last remark. "Then if you didn't expect to sell us anything, what did you come for?"
"For supper," said Sproatly cheerfully. "Besides that, to take Miss Rawlinson a drive. I told her last night it would afford me considerable pleasure to show her the prairie. We could go round by Lander's and back."
"Then you will probably come across her somewhere about the straw-pile with the kiddies."
Sproatly took the hint, and when he went out Mrs. Hastings laughed.
"You would hardly suppose that was a young man of excellent education?" she said. "So it's on Winifred's account he has driven over; at first I fancied it was on yours."
Agatha was astonished, but she smiled. "If Winifred favours him with her views about young men he will probably be rather sorry for himself. He lives near you?"
"No," said Mrs. Hastings; "in the summer he lives in his waggon, or under it, I don't know which. Of course, if he's really taken with Winifred he will have to alter that."
"But he has only seen her once--you can't mean that he is serious."
"I really can't speak for Sproatly, but it would be quite in keeping with the customs of the country if he was."
A minute or two later Agatha saw Winifred in the waggon when it reappeared from behind the strawpile, and Mrs. Hastings turned towards the window.
"She has gone with him," she said significantly. "Unfortunately, he has taken my kiddies too. If he brings them back with no bones broken it will be a relief to me."
Agatha had spent a month with Mrs. Hastings when the latter, who was driving over to Wyllard's homestead with her one afternoon, pulled up her team while they were still some little distance away from it, and looked about her with evident interest. On the one hand, a vast breadth of torn-up loam ran back across the prairie, which was now faintly flecked with green. On the other, ploughing teams were scattered here and there across the tussocky sod, and long lines of clods that flashed where the sunlight struck their facets trailed out behind them. The great sweep of grasses that rustled joyously before a glorious warm wind, gleamed almost luminous, and overhead hung a vault of blue without a cloud in it. Trailing out across it, skeins and wisps of birds moved up from the south.