"Then that's where ye'll feel out of place," Scarlett remarked. "Wherever the surface is flat as a billiard table, as regards conditions, all class distinctions being wiped out, it's there that aristocracy begins. The democrats insist on it!"
"Perhaps I can accommodate myself even to your idea of aristocracy," Evelyn remarked, ironically. "The first question is, can we find a suitable dwelling?"
"I've been investigating," answered Scarlett, "and I find at Lost Shoe Creek there is an abandoned cabin ye can have rent free; a really very decent affair 'twill be with a little patching, which the boys will be only too proud to lend a hand with."
Evelyn gasped. "And you call that suitable for _me_!"
Scarlett shrugged his shoulders. "This is the wilderness, my lady."
"My dear," interposed Maclane, "you must remember that building is a costly matter. Even unskilled labor, when you can obtain it, commands five dollars a day. Talk of democracy; no man here is looking for a day's wage at carpentering, when any turn of the pick and shovel may make him a Croesus! Make up your mind to it that the Sergeant is offering you the equivalent of New York's most costly hostelry."
"Oh, very well!" Miss Durant condescended to the cabin. "I suppose we can have tents for the servants? I shall need two women besides Sarah."
"Pardon, miss." At her name, the maid's stout form appeared from behind the angle of the veranda, where she had been conducting a discreet flirtation with the waterman, who with a bucket supported by a frame on wheels and drawn by eight frisky little huskies, supplied Perdu with water from the lake at five cents the pail. "Do not count on me, miss. When my month is up I am looking to settle down on my own account."
"You are going to desert me? You are planning to set up in business, Sarah?" asked Evelyn, dismayed.
"Business!" Sarah laughed, scornfully. "With men growing on the bushes, as one might say."
"You don't mean to say you are going to get married?"
"Why not me as well as the next lady, miss, and sooner than some, in a place where ladies is valued far more for their practical abilities than for mere youth and skin-deep beauty. I am told that two French-Canadian gentlemen, who are starting rival laundries, came to blows about me in the Pioneer Bakery last night; this gentleman with the waterworks concession has just passed some extremely gratifying remarks about me--though my own preference is for a Scotch gentleman with religious views and a copper proposition. Dear knows one needs something stable to tie up to in this outlandish place, where day and night get all mixed up!"