“Good heavens!” said Sylvia.  “I shouldn’t like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t.  It takes a little getting used to.  But you’ll go through the mill presently.  All we farmers’ wives do.  You and Burke Ranger won’t go on in this Garden of Eden style very long.”

Sylvia laughed with a touch of uncertainty.  “I suppose it’s a mistake to expect too much of life anywhere,” she said.  “But it’s difficult to be miserable when one is really busy, isn’t it?  Anyhow one can’t be bored.”

“Are you really happy here?” Mrs. Merston asked point-blank, in the tone of one presenting a challenge.

Sylvia paused for a moment, only a moment, and then she answered, “Yes.”

“And you’ve been married how long?  Six weeks?”

“About that,” said Sylvia.

Mrs. Merston looked at her, and an almost cruel look came into her pale eyes.  “Ah!  You wait a little!” she said.  “You’re young now.  You’ve got all your vitality still in your veins.  Wait till this pitiless country begins to get hold of you!  Wait till you begin to bear children, and all your strength is drained out of you, and you still have to keep on at the same grinding drudgery till you’re ready to drop, and your husband comes in and laughs at you and tells you to buck up, when you haven’t an ounce of energy left in you!  See how you like the prison-house then!  All your young freshness gone and nothing left—­nothing left!”

She spoke with such force that Sylvia felt actually shocked.  Yet still with that instinctive tact of hers, she sought to smooth the troubled waters.  “Oh, have you children?” she said.  “How many?  Do tell me about them!”

“I have had six,” said Mrs. Merston dully.  “They are all dead.”

She clenched her hands at Sylvia’s quick exclamation of pity, but she gave no other sign of emotion.

“They all die in infancy,” she said.  “It’s partly the climate, partly that I am overworked—­worn out.  He—­” with infinite bitterness—­“can’t see it.  Men don’t—­or won’t.  You’ll find that presently.  It’s all in front of you.  I don’t envy you in the least, Mrs. Ranger.  I daresay you think there is no one in the world like your husband.  Young brides always do.  But you’ll find out presently.  Men are all selfish where their own pleasures are concerned.  And Burke Ranger is no exception to the rule.  He has a villainous temper, too.  Everyone knows that.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that!” said Sylvia gently.  “He and I are partners, you know.  Let me put a little eau-de-cologne in that water!  It’s so refreshing.”

Mrs. Merston scarcely noticed the small service.  She was too intent upon her work of destruction.  “You don’t know him—­yet,” she said.  “But anyone you meet can tell you the same.  Why, he had a young cousin here—­such a nice boy—­and he sent him straight to the bad with his harsh treatment,—­sjamboked him and turned him out of the house for some slight offence.  Yes, no wonder you look scandalized; but I assure you it’s true.  Guy Ranger was none too steady, I know.  But that was absolutely the finishing touch.  He was never the same again.”