"Oh! look there, Philip--here is a school!"

Elizabeth bent forward eagerly. On the bare prairie stood a small white
house, like the house that children draw on their slates: a chimney in
the middle, a door, a window on either side. Outside, about twenty
children playing and dancing. Inside, through the wide-open doorway a
vision of desks and a few bending heads.

Philip's patience was put to it. Had she supposed that children went
without schools in Canada?

But she took no heed of him.

"Look how lovely the children are, and how happy! What'll Canada be when
they are old? And not another sign of habitation anywhere--nothing--but
the little house--on the bare wide earth! And there they dance, as
though the world belonged to them. So it does!"

"And my sister to a lunatic asylum!" said Philip, exasperated. "I say,
why doesn't that man Anderson come and see us?"

"He promised to come in and lunch."

"He's an awfully decent kind of fellow," said the boy warmly.

Elizabeth opened her eyes.

"I didn't know you had taken any notice of him, Philip."

"No more I did," was the candid reply. "But did you see what he brought
me this morning?" He pointed to the seat behind him, littered with
novels, which Elizabeth recognized as new additions to their travelling
store. "He begged or borrowed them somewhere from his friends or people
in the hotel; told me frankly he knew I should be bored to-day, and
might want them. Rather 'cute of him, wasn't it?"

Elizabeth was touched. Philip had certainly shown rather scant civility
to Mr. Anderson, and this trait of thoughtfulness for a sickly and
capricious traveller appealed to her.

"I suppose Delaine will be here directly?" Philip went on.

"I suppose so."

Philip let himself down into the seat beside her.

"Look here, Elizabeth," lowering his voice; "I don't think Delaine is
any more excited about Canada than I am. He told me last night he
thought the country about Winnipeg perfectly hideous."

"_Oh_!" cried Elizabeth, as though someone had flipped her.

"You'll have to pay him for this journey, Elizabeth. Why did you ask him
to come?"

"I _didn't_ ask him, Philip. He asked himself."

"Ah! but you let him come," said the youth shrewdly. "I think,
Elizabeth, you're not behaving quite nicely."

"How am I not behaving nicely?"

"Well, you don't pay any attention to him. Do you know what he was doing
while you were looking at the cows yesterday?"

Elizabeth re