342 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



temper badly, whilst he kept his with the same 

 careful and deliberate precision that he kept his 

 spectacles. 



When I had said everything that I shouldn't, he 

 shook his head sadly, " You can't be expected to 

 understand a man's duty to his family," he said, 

 and that was the beginning and end and the sum of 

 his argument. 



" I understand perfectly," I contended. " Don't 

 I know and love to do my duty to my beasts ? 

 Through that alone I not only understand but 

 appreciate your anxiety about your family ; it is not 

 that, but your lack of confidence in me which I 

 resent. I am just as anxious about the comfort of 

 my beasts during the winter as you are about the 

 comfort of your children, but I don't insult you by 

 discussing your ability to carry out your respon- 

 sibility with the neighbours, and I don't even 

 worry you to hurry on your stable preparations a 

 little, although I sometimes fear winter will be 

 through the chinks before you have finished the 

 plaster chore. I worried myself, and worried a very 

 good man last year about the fuel, although he was 

 altogether too inclined to let the whole thing slide, 

 but I didn't then know that I could pay five dollars 

 for a permit to cut on the Hudson Bay Reserve, 

 and that the men at the Fort usually cut in gangs, 

 and many of them make their living in the winter 

 by supplying people who have no convenience for 

 obtaining it themselves. Besides there are half a 

 dozen good loads left on the place, and in the 

 immediate neighbourhood, if you take the trouble 

 to go and look for it. However, to-morrow I 

 will take out the wheat, and you will go out and get 



