Return to Jalna. Mazo de la Roche

“run the stables.”

      “It keeps us busy, I can tell you, sir,” put in Wright grinning. Then he added soberly, “I don’t know what I’d do without Miss Adeline. There’s nothing she won’t turn her hand to. She rides at all the best shows. Of course, there aren’t any real big ones since the war but there’s a good many. Gosh, you ought to see her ride, sir! I often say to my wife that one of the reasons I hope the boss will come out of this war alive is so he can see her ride.”

      “I hope he will,” said Finch.

      Wright went on, “I can’t say we get all the cooperation from the big house that we should, sir. It makes it hard to carry on. There’s things that need doing about the stables and we can’t get permission to have them done. It will be different when the boss comes home.”

      “I write to him every week,” said Adeline.

      “To tell him how well you are getting on at school, I suppose,” said Finch.

      “I hate school!”

      “So did I.”

      “It spoils everything. You can’t get on with what you really want to do.”

      “I never bothered much about school,” said Wright. “They learned me how to read and write. That was enough for me. Now take Mr. Maurice, he likes book learning. But he hasn’t got no use for horses.”

      “He hasn’t got any use for anything that looks like work,” declared Adeline. “We thought when he came home he’d be an extra man. But he’s a lazy dog. Gosh, isn’t he lazy, Wright?”

      Wright, with a straw between his teeth, laughed derisively. “Say, I’d back one of his two little brothers against him for work, any day. Just to see him take a hold of anything manual, shows he hasn’t any interest in it. But he’s got the dough, so he’ll be able to do what he likes.”

      Finch said, “Come along, Adeline, I want to talk to you.”

      “Don’t you want to see the horses first?”

      “I’ll see them tomorrow. It’s Saturday. You’ll be at home.”

      Outside he said to her, “Look here, I don’t think you ought to discuss family affairs with Wright. He’s too familiar.”

      Her fine brows went up. “Who shall I discuss them with?”

      “I don’t think you should have said what you did about your mother — just as I was going in I heard you.”

      “Pooh — that was nothing!”

      “It wasn’t respectful to her.”

      “I’m always respectful to her.”

      “But you should be, behind her back, as well as to her face.”

      “I know. But you can’t think how hard it is for Wright and me, with her always interfering. Do you know she wants to send me to boarding school? She knows we can’t afford it but she wants to send me away from Jalna. Yet we sold the horse I rode at the Yelland show, for eighteen hundred dollars! What do you think of that?” Her eyes flashed pride at Finch. Her slender body was taut with pride.

      “Splendid!” he exclaimed.

      “The American who bought him said he wouldn’t have made an offer if he hadn’t seen me ride him.”

      “Fine!”

      “Well, that was a lot of money, wasn’t it, Uncle Finch?”

      “It was. Does your father know?”

      “I wrote right away. I guess he’ll have my letter by now. You can see how it’s necessary for me to be here. Yet Mummy’s always talking of sending me to boarding school.”

      The calm golden beauty of the October evening was descending on the orchard as they passed by. It was dusk already beneath the trees but great mounds of apples could be seen, and some of the branches hung low with their weight.

      “It looks a profitable crop,” remarked Finch.

      Adeline drew her brows together in a line of troubled responsibility. “If we can harvest them! We simply can’t get men.”

      “I will turn in tomorrow morning,” he declared.

      “Tell Mummy that. She will be glad.”

      Adeline’s tone was so heartfelt that Finch turned to look down at her, striding beside him. There was something pathetic, he thought, in the little figure, for all its courage. Above it arched the immensity of the sky; behind rose the bulk of the stables, their occupants to be cared for, exercised, exhibited at shows; there stretched the army of apple trees, their fruit to be garnered and sold; ahead the dark shape of vine-embowered house with all its problems. The child, he felt sure, was eager to thrust her slender shoulders under the weight of responsibility, never considering herself a responsibility or problem.

      Oh, it was good to be home! He put out his hand and took one of Adeline’s in it. They swung along together.

      “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you’ll have a new hired-man. The thought of physical work is bliss.”

      “Good,” she returned stoutly. “Tomorrow is Saturday. I’ll be working with you.”

      As they neared the house he looked across the ravine where dark night was settling. “How are those girls who live at the fox farm?” he asked.

      “They’re a funny lot. They keep to themselves. They lead a very confiscated life.”

      “Do you mean isolated?”

      “I expect I do. Their sister’s an actress and she supports them. They’re queer but I like them. Do you know them?”

      “A little. I think I’ll go to see them on my afternoon off — if you can spare me.”

III THE SISTERS

      ON THE FOLLOWING day the three sisters who lived in the house called the fox farm were gathered about a round table eating their evening meal. The house had once been occupied by people who bred silver foxes, and though that had been years ago the name still clung. The three had lived here since the first year of the war. Their step-sister had brought them out from Wales that she might better provide for them. Though they were grown up they were helpless as children when it came to looking after themselves. Before coming to Canada they had lived on a remote farm in the heart of the Welsh hills. They had seen almost no one outside their own family. Then their father had died, their brother been killed in an airplane accident. They had been helpless, like frightened children, and had obediently and eagerly journeyed to this new world to which their step-sister, herself only a young girl, had urged them to come. She was an actress whose occasional appearances on the screen made it possible for her to provide for them. Yet her heart was with the legitimate stage and it was there she hoped to make her name.

      The three about the table showed little physical resemblance to each other, but there was a resemblance that was visible to the most casual observer. It was the likeness of people who have lived identical lives since birth. The thought of being separated, one from the other, would have been terrible to them even while they were filled with curiosity for the outer world. The journey from Wales to the fox farm had been their one adventure.

      Though the table was round, the dignity of a place at its head was given by the presence of the teapot in front of Althea, the eldest, a silvery-fair girl in her middle twenties. At first sight she looked very thin till it was seen that her bones were unusually small. She wore an attractive dress of a light green colour which was in contrast to the careless, almost shabby attire of her sisters, both of whom were eating much more heartily than she.

      Gemmel, the one next to her in age, had a pale, pointed face, wide at the temples, with large greenish-blue eyes and lively dark hair. The dominant expression of her face was an almost