his place isn't fit for you."

"I am quite willing, so long as you are coming too."

"I can't. Isn't that plain? This thing is getting horrible--but I have to
see it through. It was Clavering fixed it, any way."

"Put it away until to-morrow," Flora Schuyler advised. "It will be easier
to see whether you have any cause to be angry then."

Hetty turned towards her with a flash in her eyes. "I know just what you
mean, and it would be nicer just to look as if I never felt anything, as
some of those English folks you were fond of did; but I can't. I wasn't
made that way. Still, I'm not going to apologize for my father. He is
Torrance of Cedar, and I'm standing in with him--but if I were a man I'd
go down and whip Clavering. I could almost have shaken him when he wanted
to stay here and tried to make me ask him."

"Well," said Flora Schuyler, quietly, "I am going to stay with you; but I
don't quite see what Clavering has done."

"No?" said Hetty. "Aren't you just a little stupid, Flo? Now, he has made
me ashamed--horribly--and I was proud of the men we had in this country.
He's starving the women and the little children; there are quite a few of
them lying in freezing shanties and sod-huts out there in the snow. It's
just awful to be hungry with the temperature at fifty below."

Miss Schuyler shivered. It was very warm and cosy sitting there, behind
double casements, beside a glowing stove; but there had been times when,
wrapped in costly furs and great sleigh-robes and generously fed, she had
felt her flesh shrink from the cold of the prairie.

"But they have Mr. Grant to help them," she said.

Even in her agitation Hetty was struck by something which suggested
unquestioning faith in her companion's tone.

"You believe he could do something," she said.

"Of course! You know him better than I do, Hetty."

"Well," said Hetty, "though he has made me vexed with him, I am proud of
Larry; and there's just one thing he can't do. That is, to see women and
children hungry while he has a dollar to buy them food with. Oh, I know
who was going to pay for the provisions that came from Chicago that
Clavering got the railroad men to send the wrong way, and if Larry had
only been with us he would have been splendid. As it is, if he feeds them
in spite of Clavering, I could 'most forgive him everything."

"Are you quite sure that you have a great deal to forgive?"

Hetty, instead of resenting the question, stretched out her ha