136 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



hold their garment, and that the voice of the 

 prairie is still silent, one might dream not only that 

 spring is here, but summer nigh. 



This fair and gracious season followed in Nancy's 

 trail, warming one's heart and softening the last 

 days of February and the early days of March so that 

 one remembered that yellow daffodils were keeping 

 company with pink tulips and English violets within 

 the precincts of grey Westminster, and then rode 

 at full gallop into the shimmering, glowing white- 

 ness of the prairie snow, since rosemary is not for 

 spring. 



Together Nancy and I learned our neigh- 

 bourhood. Barbed-wire fencing was not nearly 

 as general then as now, and but for one solitary 

 fenced enclosure, which held all the charm of the 

 unexpected on either side, we could carve our line 

 to Springbrook as the crow flies. The delicate 

 and exhilarating air that comes from the union 

 of ice and sun in this sweet season goes to the head 

 of mankind and beast, and with the brilliant sun- 

 shine mocks caution and all sombre virtues. We 

 followed imaginary trails, and chased vivid and 

 delightful and evasive bits of landscape through 

 glorious snow-clad spaces of the prairie, and more 

 than once even sure-footed Nancy lost her fine 

 sense of trail and plunged us both into an unexpected 

 bath in a snowdrift. 



It was Mabel Mazey who first took me to Wide- 

 awake, where we raced in earnest from end to end 

 of a mile stretch of summer-fallowed seed-bed 

 which cultivation and the action of frost and snow 

 had rendered fine as garden soil. Paul and Nancy 

 travelled over it neck and neck, but Paul's longer 



