“Oh no, not that you should. There’s nothing compulsory about it, and if you don’t take her, no doubt some one else will. It’s my guess that Gardiner wouldn’t need a second hint. But it’s your privilege to invite her. The worst she can do is refuse. And she won’t do the worst, either.”
“Oh, fight that out with her; I’m not her guardian.”
They drove in silence for some distance, their thoughts accompanied by the rhythmic cadence of the jangling trace-chains. The sun was an hour from the setting, and the golden glow of its oblique rays across the prairies and over the fast-greening wheatfields shed an amber radiance that danced along the trail. The shouts of men at their evening’s amusement, the lowing of cattle, the occasional bark of a dog, the far off drumming of prairie chicken, came through the quiet stillness of the air. When at last Burton spoke it was in a confidential note he had never used since he had helped lay his mother in the hillside.
“Harry,” he said, “men don’t often talk of these things, but you’ve guessed my great desire. I know I am foolish; it’s unreasonable of me to entertain such ambitions, but our great hopes, like our great sorrows, come to us unbidden. I cannot help what I feel, but I hope I can help what I do. I appreciate beyond expression the words you have said to me, with all that they imply, but would it be fair, if, indeed, it were not presumptuous, for one like me—I mean a boy, for I am nothing more, on a small wage, and with no other means of support—would it be fair that I should meddle in what every one will say are much more appropriate arrangements?”
“You are referring to Gardiner,” said Harry. “And in the first place, I want you to know that every one will not say that that would be a more appropriate arrangement. It may be true that you are young, that you have your own way to make in the world, but all that is in your favour. You are well educated; better than most town boys, for you have learned to spend your idle hours to advantage, which they, as a rule, do not; you have a good constitution and a clear conscience, and the girl who isn’t willing to face the battle of life with a companion so equipped isn’t worthy to be his wife. In this country women do not marry men who have achieved distinction; in almost every case where wealth or honour come, they come after marriage. If you think my cousin isn’t wise enough to know that in the battle of life as it must be waged in this great new country a man’s mental and physical equipment count for more than any cash capital, you do her intelligence a grave injustice. But I want to warn you that I am not speaking for her; I have not been given, and I have not asked, her confidence in these matters. But I know Gardiner well, and I know you a little, and I have my cousin’s happiness sufficiently at heart to say what I have said.”