Lady Merton, Colonist

, there gathered on the platform beside Lady M

r three ladies, among them a little English girl with fine eyes, whom Philip Gaddesden at once marked for approval; and a tall, dark-complexioned man with hollow cheeks, large ears, and a l

derson, who was well known, it appeared, in Winnipeg, had done a good deal of telephoning. And by the letters and the telephoning this group of busy people had allowed itself to be gathered; sim

ities of all these strangers with wonderful quickness, flitting about from one to another, making friends with them all, and constr

isper to Mariette, as they we

bi

houlders. He was only there to please Anderson. What did the aristocratic Englishwoman on

o be off, a man, who had entered the cloak-room of the station to deposit a bundle just as the car-party arrived, approached the cloak-room door from the inside, and looked through the glazed upper half. His stealthy movements and his strange appearance

eering by the door. His clothes were squalid, and both they and his person diffused the odours of the drinking bar from which he had just come. The porter in charge of the cloak-room had run a hostile ey

e turned back to speak to Mariette, and his face and figure were clearly visible to the watcher behind the barre

oups. In the dining-room, the white tablecloth spread for tea, with the china and silver upon it, made a pleasant show. And now two high o

eft behind. He raised his hat, the car moved slowly off, and in the group immediately behind Lady Merton the hand

the station he fell in with a younger man, who had been apparently waiting for

patiently. "Thought you was

out before. It

nythin' you're after! But you give me my two dollars sharp, and don't keep me another half

wly in an inner pocket

car's going

seven--as ever is. Car shunted at Calgary to-morrow night. So none of

rs. The youth, who was a bartender from a small saloon in th

k you'd better clean yourself a bit,

the train?" said the old man sha

cry our eyes out if you was sayin' good-bye. Ta-ta!" And with th

d up the main street of Winnipeg, which on this bright afternoon was crowded with people and traffic. He passed the door of a solicitor's office, where a small sum of mone

at he was looking for. He found it at last, and sat pondering it--the paragraph which, when he had hit upo

to the railway workers proper and to the whole Winnipeg section. Mr. Anderson seems to have a remarkable hold on the railway men, and he is besides a speaker of great force. He is said to have addressed twenty-three meetings, and to have scarcely eaten or slept for a fortnight. He was shrewd and fair in negotiation, as well as eloquent in speech. The result was an amicable settlement, satisfactory to all parties. And the farmers of the West owe Mr. Anderson a good deal. So does the C

paper, incoherent pictures of the past coursing through his mind,

earth, and a mirage, born of sun and moisture, spread along the edge of the horizon, so that Elizabeth, the lake-lover, could only imagine in her bewilderment that Lake Winnipeg or Lake Manitoba had come dancing south and east to meet her, so clearly did the houses and trees, far away behind them, and on either side

in one long straggling line of wooden houses along the level earth; its scattered, treeless lakes, from which the duck rose as the train passed! Was it this mere foreignness, this likeness in difference, that made it strike so sharply,

connected. She was indeed aware of him all the time. She watched him secretly; watching herself,

passed his seventieth year, but Elizabeth noticed in the old men of Canada a strained expectancy, a buoyant hope, scarcely inferior to that of the younger generation. There wa

and within measurable time this plain of a thousand miles from here

arsh voice in a French accent,

the speaker, suddenly lightened, as t

ise," continued Mariette, with a laug

nd the looping vines, the patches of silky corn and spiky maize, and all the interlacing richness and broidering of the Italian plain. His soul rebelled against this naked new earth, and its bare ne

is to Elizabet

to tease him. "But Canada

r than when he had parted from her in England. The delicious thought

ped tow

like Canada!" he said, in her

grew suddenly rosy, to her own great annoyance. Before she could reply, however,

e playing the devil's advocate as usual. Anderson tells me you a

gaunt, but he had the air of a grand seigneur, and was in fa

d as to these Yankees that are now pouring into the new provinces. He, like everyo

touch of scorn. "Excellent stuff! We

bring knowledge of the prairie and the climate, which your Englishmen haven't got. As for capital, America is doing everything; financing the railways, the mines, buying u

an from Vancouver--"They have three-f

an she will be Catholic--with apologies to Mariette. These Yankees come in--they turn Englishmen in six months--they celebrate Domini

ull!" said Mar

nd the lumberman fell upon another subject. Philip and the pretty English girl we

riend, Mr. And

m on the journey yesterday.

ts into the House, he will be heard of.

he are ol

College--and he at McGill. But we saw a great deal of e

omething of h

e only made it sadder. Three years ago he was engaged to my sister. Then the Archbishop forbade

d Elizabeth, her eye on

r friend suffered. However, now he has got over it. And I hope he will marry. He

ents, he remaining all the time English of the English; the tendency to melancholy--a personal and private melancholy--which mingled in him with a passionate enthusiasm for Canada, and Canada's future; Mariette drew these things for her, in a stately yet pungent French that affected her strangely, as though the French of Saint Simon-

th was given up to the owner of the great farm--one of the rich men of Canada for whom e

slipped away, unnoticed, from the party. He had marked a small lake or "slough" at the rear of the house, with wide reed-beds and a clump of

laietai, ? te pauêmar neion an h

fitted plough through the fallow, and joyful to such an one is the going down of the sun that sends him

. He walked with the Greek ploughman, he smelt the Greek earth, his thoughts caressed the dar

a queen's parlour, he and the pretty girl were playing at bob-cherry in the saloon, to the scandal of Yerkes, who, with the honour of the car and t

tening cows and mottled calves. These smooth, sleek creatures, housed there for the profit of Canada and her farm life, seemed to Elizabeth no less po

onscious of differences between them which his pride exaggerated. He himself had never crossed the Atlantic; but he understood that she and her people were "swells"--well-born in the English sense, and rich. Secretly he credited them with those defects of English society of which the New World talks--its vulgar standards and prejudices. There was not a sign of th

lled round the corner of the wood to reconnoitre, the result was always the same. If Anderson and Lady Mert

word revealed to Elizabeth that Anderson

ll come and talk to us!" c

e. He was not, however, the only spectator of them. Arthur Delaine, standing by, though

with a bundle under his arm, watched the arrival of the Gaddesden party. He saw Anderso

rious important affairs that were on his mind, and by recollections of the afternoon. Meanwhile, in the front