whelming with its advancing flood, town
and plain, but leaving here and there a tawny hill rising above the
choking mist, like barren islands in a sea of arctic white.

Elijah shivered.

"It doesn't look like a land of perpetual sunshine, does it?"

"No, and it doesn't feel like one either." Helen's teeth fairly
chattered as she drew her wraps more closely about her.

"When we get ready to sell fruit ranches from our block of ground, we
will entertain our Eastern purchasers with lateness. Late suppers, late
retiring, late rising--"

"And late sales." Helen shrugged her shoulders. "We'll have to keep
prospective purchasers under cover all of the time. If we take them out
early, we'll freeze them, if late, we'll roast them, and almost any time
they're liable to be blown away. Just look at that!" She nodded toward a
grove of native orange trees. The outer row had had every leaf twisted
from it by the constant winds.

Elijah glanced at his companion.

"I'll tell you my first move. I'm going to get you into a cheerful mood
and then put you under cover and keep you there. What is the matter,
anyway?"

Helen made no reply. Perhaps she could not, in exact truth. Her youthful
philosophy had hardly gone far enough to emphasize the fact that nature
is only responsive to our moods, not creative of them.

"Twenty miles is a long drive on an empty stomach." Elijah spoke
apologetically. "I can go a week without eating, or sleeping either, if
necessary. It came pretty near being necessary one time." He shrugged
his shoulders. "Poor Amy! She never complained. Do you think you would
have put up with a husband who gave you only oatmeal week in and week
out, and not over much at that?"

"I might have put up with the husband, that would depend; but the
oatmeal, never! If I had thought it worth while, I wouldn't have
troubled him about that, even. I would have found something else for him
and for myself too!"

Helen spoke with decision. Elijah's words were uppermost in her mind, a
realization of what his work had cost him. Her enthusiasm kindled, she
forgot for the moment that the suggestion of the more helpful course
which she would have pursued, was an unqualified condemnation of Amy. It
was partly owing to the singleness of the vision of youth, partly to the
fact that Elijah's wife was hardly a tangible entity to her.

Elijah looked down at Helen. His face was sober. A moment he looked,
then turned his eyes to the distant h