terests me."

Carrie smiled. "It isn't as a type a girl gets interesting, Jim."

"It would be ridiculous to think about her in any other way. I've had
nothing to do with girls like that; she's the first I've met."

"Oh, well," said Carrie. "Don't you want to learn something about your
English relations?"

"No," said Jim, in a thoughtful voice. "In a sense, I'm half afraid."

"Afraid?" said Carrie.

He was silent for a few moments and then resumed: "On the whole, I've
been happy. I feel I've got my proper job and am satisfied. For all
that, when those Englishmen talked to me at the shack I had a strange
notion that I knew things they knew and belonged to a world I hadn't
lived in yet. Sometimes at McGill I got a kind of restlessness that
made me want to see the Old Country. I fought against it."

"Why did you fight?"

"For one thing, it's obvious I belong where I am; I can make good in
this country, I know my job. Something pulls another way, but I don't
want to go."

"Ah," said Carrie, "I think I understand. Still, there's the
adventure, Jim. And if you didn't like it in England, you could come
back."

"There's a risk. I expect it's hard to get back when you leave your
proper place. Then I have much I value; you and Jake and the boys who
work for me. I stand on firm ground here; ground I know and like. In
the Old Country it might be different----"

"Do you mean you might be different?"

"You are clever, Carrie. I think I do mean something like that. I
feel now and then as if there was another Jim Dearham who, so to speak,
hadn't developed yet. In a way, I'm afraid of him."

Carrie looked thoughtful, but her eyes were soft. "Jake and I are
satisfied with the Jim we know. Still, perhaps, you ought to give the
other his chance." She paused, and her voice had a curious note when
she resumed: "If I were a man, I'd let nothing stop my development."

"You have grit," Jim said, smiling. "Grit that would carry you
anywhere and makes you something of an aristocrat. So long as you're
not afraid you must be fine. Well, I suppose I made good when I was up
against rotten ice and sliding snow, but when I think about what I have
and what I'd risk, my pluck goes."

"Sometimes you're rather nice, Jim, and you're a better philosopher
than I thought," Carrie remarked. She got up and, stopping a moment,
gave him a half-mocking glance. "But I wonder what you'd get like if
you went to the Old Count