“How soon will you start?” she inquired, when the last of the stuff was stowed aboard the little steamer.

“Twenty minutes or so,” Benton answered.  “Say,” he went on casually, “have you got any money, Stell?  I owe a fellow thirty dollars, and I left the bank roll and my check book at camp.”

Miss Benton drew the purse from her hand bag and gave it to him.  He pocketed it and went off down the wharf, with the brief assurance that he would be gone only a minute or so.

The minute, however, lengthened to nearly an hour, and Sam Davis had his blow-off valve hissing, and Stella Benton was casting impatient glances shoreward before Charlie strolled leisurely back.

“You needn’t fire up quite so strong, Sam,” he called down.  “We won’t start for a couple of hours yet.”

“Sufferin’ Moses!” Davis poked his fiery thatch out from the engine room.  “I might ‘a’ known better’n to sweat over firin’ up.  You generally manage to make about three false starts to one get-away.”

Benton laughed good-naturedly and turned away.

“Do you usually allow your men to address you in that impertinent way?” Miss Benton desired to know.

Charlie looked blank for a second.  Then he smiled, and linking his arm affectionately in hers, drew her off along the wharf, chuckling to himself.

“My dear girl,” said he, “you’d better not let Sam Davis or any of Sam’s kind hear you pass remarks like that.  Sam would say exactly what he thought about such matters to his boss, or King George, or to the first lady of the land, regardless.  Sabe?  We’re what you’ll call primitive out here, yet.  You want to forget that master and man business, the servant proposition, and proper respect, and all that rot.  Outside the English colonies in one or two big towns, that attitude doesn’t go in B.C.  People in this neck of the woods stand pretty much on the same class footing, and you’ll get in bad and get me in bad if you don’t remember that.  I’ve got ten loggers working for me in the woods.  Whether they’re impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the job properly.  They’re men, you understand, not servants.  None of them would hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything I do.  If I don’t like it, I can fight him or fire him.  They won’t stand for the sort of airs you’re accustomed to.  They have the utmost respect for a woman, but a man is merely a two-legged male human like themselves, whether he wears mackinaws or broadcloth, has a barrel of money of none at all.  This will seem odd to you at first, but you’ll get used to it.  You’ll find things rather different out here.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed.  “But it sounds queer.  For instance, if one of papa’s clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he’d have been discharged on the spot.”

“The logger’s a different breed,” Benton observed drily.  “Or perhaps only the same breed manifesting under different conditions.  He isn’t servile.  He doesn’t have to be.”