Carrie colored, but Jake smiled. "Did you tell the lawyer about this plan?"
"I did not," said Jim, with a rather haughty look that Carrie thought was new. "Langrigg is mine. It's my pleasure to show it to my friends."
Mrs. Winter looked disturbed. "You are kind, Jim, but I'm an old woman and have never gone far from home. Your relations mightn't like me."
"I don't know yet if my relations will like me. Anyhow, they have got to approve my guests. I wanted you to sell the store, because, if I'm satisfied with Langrigg, you mayn't come back. There's no real difficulty about your coming. In fact, you have got to come."
Mrs. Winter hesitated, as if she were thinking hard, and then her gentle face got resolute. "Very well. I'd like Carrie to see the Old Country."
Jim turned to the others with a triumphant smile. "It's fixed. Your mother will need you, Carrie, and I'll need my partner. We have put over some hard jobs and I imagine I'm up against another now. I want you, Jake; you have got to see me out."
"Since I don't know your folks and their habits, it isn't plain how I could help," Jake replied.
"I don't know much. What about it? We made good prospecting when we had never used the rocker and thawn-out gravel. We graded the pack-trail across Snowy Range when we didn't know how to drill and start off giant-powder. Well, we're going to make good at Langrigg if I stay."
"Then I'll come, for a time," Jake agreed and looked at Carrie.
"I wouldn't like to be left alone," she said and smiled.
Jim was satisfied. He had carried out his plan and it was significant that Carrie was willing to go; if Martin had attracted her; she would sooner have remained behind. In a way, he thought it strange that Mrs. Winter, from whom he had expected most opposition, was the first to agree, but this was not important.
After a time they went to the Stanley park, where Jake and Mrs. Winter met somebody they knew. Carrie sat down on a bench under a giant fir and Jim lighted a cigarette.
"You and Jake rather puzzled me," he remarked. "You weren't curious; I'd a feeling that things were not the same."
Carrie gave him a steady look. "I'm afraid we were very mean--but there was a difference. You were one of us when you went away; you came back an English landowner."