When he showed me that ugly hut, and
his sickly fruit trees, and that terrible little garden where every
flower seemed to be protesting against its existence, I had to make-
believe that it was Eden to me. Each day he goes off to his work, and
he always asks the same question: 'You won't be lonesome, little
woman, will you?' and I answer, 'No.' But I am lonesome, so lonesome
that I should have gone mad if I hadn't found someone--you--to whom I
could speak out."
"I'm frightfully sorry," I stammered.
"Thanks. I know you are. And your brother is sorry, and everybody
else, too. The women, my neighbours in the brush-hills, look at me
with the same question in their eyes: 'What are you doing here?' they
say.
"How impertinent!"
"Pertinent, I call it."
From that moment I regarded her with different eyes. If she had brains
to measure obstacles, she might surmount them, for brains in a new
country are the one possession which adversity increases.
"Mrs. Misterton," I said slowly, "you are in a tight place, and I
won't insult your intelligence by calling it by a prettier name; but
you can pull yourself and Jim out of it, and I believe you will.
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