y-day comes
around. Don't talk to me of your wife."

The injustice of the girl's unreasoning complaint was staggering. But it
smote the heart of the man no less for that. Whatever his inward
feelings, however, outwardly he gave no sign. He did not even raise his
eyes from the saucepan he was stirring with so much deliberation and
care.

"You're wrong, little girl," he said with quiet emphasis, and without
one shadow of the emotion that was stirring behind the words. "You're
dead wrong. You've got all those things before you. The things you're
crazy for. And when they come along I guess they'll be all the sweeter
for the waiting, all the better for the round of chores you're hating
now, all the more welcome for the figgering you need to do now with the
cents we get each month. You don't know how I stand with Ottawa. I do.
There's just two years between me and the promotion you reckon I can't
get. That's not a long time. Then we move to a big post where you can
get all the dancing you need, and that won't be in Abe's saloon. You
know that when my old father goes--and I'm not yearning for him to
go--he'll pass me all he has, which is fifty thousand dollars and his
swell farm in Ontario."

He paused and dipped out some of the contents of the saucepan in the
spoon he was stirring it with. He tested its temperature. Then he went
on with his preparations.

"Is there a reasonable kick coming to any woman in those things?" he
demanded. "You knew most of what I'm telling you now when you guessed
you loved me enough to marry me, and to help me along the road I'd
marked out. Have I done a thing less than I promised?" he went on
passing back to the table and picking up the glass bottle lying there,
and removing its top. "If I have just tell me, and I'll do all I
know--" He shook his head. "It's all unreasonable. Maybe you're tired.
Maybe----"

"It isn't unreasonable," Nita cried sharply. "That's how men always say
to a woman when they can't understand. I tell you I'm sick with the
hopelessness of it all. You aren't sure of your promotion. You haven't
got it yet. And maybe your father will live another twenty years. Oh,
God, to think of another twenty years of this. Do you know you're away
from home nine months out of twelve? Do you know that more than half my
time I spend guessing if you're alive or dead? And all the time the
grind of the work. The same thing day after day without relief." She
watched the man as he poured the