"To begin with, I'm by no means certain that I'll have to pay it. There's good stuff in him, and I want to give him an opportunity for becoming a useful citizen. In the next place, the line must be drawn somewhere, and the crop I'm putting in wouldn't stand the cost of a spring in Toronto, if it's to be anything like the winter in Montreal."
Florence saw that he meant it and changed the subject, for there were times when she realized that it was not advisable to drive her husband too far. After a while he strolled away toward the stables in search of Thorne, and a few minutes later they sat down together on the summit of a low rise. Hunter lighted his pipe and, resting one elbow in the grass, lay smoking thoughtfully for a while before he spoke to his companion.
"Mavy," he said, "you are going to do what would be the wisest thing in the case of the average man--but I'm not wholly sure it would be that in yours. After all, there's a good deal to be said for the life you lead."
"It will hurt a little to give it up," Thorne acknowledged. "But isn't there something to be said for--the other kind?"
Hunter pointed with his pipe to where the rise ran into the birches.
"I spent my first summer as a farmer in a tent yonder, and in several ways it was the happiest one I've ever known. I couldn't cook, and as a rule when I unyoked my oxen after the day's work I was too played out to light a fire. I lived on messes that would probably kill me now, and my clothes went to bits before the summer was half-way through, but I was bubbling over with aspirations and a whole-hearted optimism then. I had scarcely a dollar, but I had what seemed better--an unwavering belief in the future. It was just as good then to lie down, healthily tired, and listen to the little leaves whispering in the cool of the dusk as it was to get up with the dawn without a care, fit and ready for what must be done."
"Oh, yes," assented Thorne, "I know. They never cast a stove in a foundry that would give you the same warmth as the red fire in the birch bluff, and the finest tea that goes to Russia wouldn't taste as good as what you drink flavored with wood smoke out of a blackened can. Then there's the empty prairie with the long trail leading on to something you feel will be better still beyond the horizon. Silence, space, liberty. How they get hold of you!"