The Land of Promise Part 41

"I was so anxious," Mrs. Sharp at length managed to say, still panting--whether with exhaustion or emotion, Nora could not tell--between her sentences, "I simply couldn't stay indoors--another minute. I went out to see if I--could catch a sight of Sid. And I walked on, and on. And then I saw the rig what's--outside. And it gave me such a _turn_! I thought it was the inspector. I just had to come--I was that nervous----!"

"But why? Is anything the matter?" asked Nora, completely puzzled.

"You're not going to tell me you don't _know_ about it? When Sid and Frank haven't been talking about anything else since Frank found it?"

"Found it? Found what?"

"The weed," said Mrs. Sharp simply.

"You've got it then," said Marsh, with a slight gesture of his head toward the table where Nora's flowers made a bright spot of color.

"It's worse here, at Taylor's. But we've got it, too."

"What does she mean?" Nora addressed herself to Eddie, abandoning all hope of getting anything out of her friend.

"We can't make out who reported us. It isn't as if we had any enemies,"

went on Mrs. Sharp gloomily, as if Nora wasn't present, or at least hadn't spoken. "It isn't as if we had any enemies," she repeated.

"Goodness knows we've never done anything to anybody."

"Oh, there's always someone to report you. After all, it's not to be wondered at. No one's going to run the risk of letting it get on his own land."

"And she has them in the house as if they were flowers!" exclaimed Mrs.

Sharp, addressing the ceiling.

"Eddie, I insist that you tell me what you two are talking about,"

demanded Nora hotly.

"My dear," said her brother, "these pretty little flowers which you've picked to make your shack look bright and--and homelike, may mean ruin."

"Eddie!"

"You must have heard--why, I remember telling you about it myself--about this mustard, this weed. We farmers in Canada have three enemies to fight: frost, hail and weed."

Mrs. Sharp confirmed his words with a despairing nod of her head.

"We was hailed out last year," she said. "Lost our whole crop. Never got a dollar for it. And now! If we lose it this year, too--why, we might just as well quit and be done with it."

"When it gets into your crop," Marsh explain for Nora's benefit, "you've got to report it. If you don't, one of the neighbors is sure to. And then they send an inspector along, and if _he_ condemns it, why you just have to destroy the whole crop, and all your year's work goes for nothing. You're lucky, in that case, if you've got a bit of money laid by in the bank and can go on till next year when the next crop comes along."

"We've only got a quarter-section and we've got five children. It's not much money you can save then."

"But----" began Nora.

"Are they out with the inspector now?" asked Marsh.

"Yes. He came out from Prentice this morning early."

"This will be a bad job for Frank."

"Yes, but he hasn't got the mouths to feed that we have. I can't think what's to become of us. He can hire out again."

Nora's face flushed.

"I--I wonder why he hasn't told me anything about it. I asked him, only this morning, what was troubling him. I was sure there was something, but he said not," she said sadly.

"Oh, I guess he's always been in the habit of keeping his troubles to himself, and you haven't taught him different yet."

Nora was about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the un.o.bservant Eddie noted with approval.

"Well," he said as cheerfully as he could, "you must hope for the best, Mrs. Sharp."

"Sid says we've only got it in one place. But perhaps he's only saying it, so as I shouldn't worry. But you know what them inspectors are; they don't lose nothin' by it. It don't matter to _them_ if you starve all winter!"

Suddenly she began to cry. Great sobs wracked her heavy frame. The big tears rolled down her cheeks. Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hards.h.i.+ps she had endured, or of the little one she had lost. She was greatly moved, for this good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.

"Oh, don't--don't cry, dear Mrs. Sharp. After all, it may all turn out right."

"They won't condemn the whole crop unless it's very bad, you know,"

Marsh reminded her. "Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company."

Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking. She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.

"What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the weed!" She had to stop again for a moment. "I can't bear any more. If we lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do from the beginning. But Sid--Sid always had his heart set on farming."

"But you couldn't go back now," said Nora, her face aglow, "you couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebody else.

And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your face."

"You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd never left home and come to this country, that I do!"

"How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd never have had a chance back home. You know that."

"Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that.

Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid."

"Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?" said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs.

Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.

"It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that," Nora went on, her eyes dark with earnestness.

Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head slightly. He wanted Nora to finish.

"What if it is the others who reap the harvest? Don't you really believe that those who break the ground are rewarded in a way that the later comers never dream of? I do."

"She's right there," broke in Marsh. "I shall never forget, Mrs. Sharp, what I felt when I saw my first crop spring up--the thought that never since the world began had wheat grown on that little bit of ground before. Oh, it was wonderful! I wouldn't go back to England now, to live, for anything in the world. I couldn't breathe."

"You're a man. You have the best of it, and all the credit."

"Not with everyone," said Nora. She fell on her knees beside the elder woman's chair and stroked her work-roughened old hand.