ys, but it has its beauty. It's
vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you
pass the breaking it's primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow.
It's wonderful after sunset in the early spring, when the little cold
wind's like wine, and it runs white to the horizon with the smoky red
on the rim of it melting into transcendental green. When the wheat
rolls across the foreground in ochre and burnished copper waves, it's
more wonderful still. One sees the fulfilment of the promise, and
takes courage."

"Then," said Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of a capacity for
such flights as this, "what is there to shrink from?"

"In the case of a small farmer's wife, the constant, never-slackening
strain. There's no hired assistance; she must clean the house, and
wash, and cook--though it's not unusual for the men to wash the plates."

The girl was evidently not much impressed, for she laughed.

"Does Gregory wash the plates?" she asked.

Wyllard's eyes twinkled. "When Sproatly won't," he said. "Still, in a
general way they only do it once a week."

"Ah," said Agatha, "I can imagine Gregory hating it. As a matter of
fact, I like him for it."

"Then she must bake, and mend her husband's clothes. Indeed, it's not
unusual for her to mend for the hired man too. Besides that, there are
always odds and ends of tasks, but the time when you feel the strain
most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule,
beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you
have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is
Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you
wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a
new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a
month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath the
robes."

"Still," said Agatha, "that does not last."

The man understood her. "Oh!" he said, "one makes progress--that is,
if one can stand the strain--but, as the one way of doing it is to sow
for a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can be no
slackening down in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and
ploughed into the soil again."

He broke off, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be
expected of him, and Agatha asked one question.

"A woman who didn't slacken could make the struggle easier for the man?"