“The main thing is that the money seems to have been well spent,” Featherstone interposed.  “For all that, we don’t know much about what Lawrence did with it or, indeed, about his life in Canada.”

“It’s curious that one gets out of the way of writing home in the West, and it’s often difficult to give one’s friends a clear idea of how one lives.  Things are different------”

Mrs. Featherstone smiled, and Foster saw that his wish to make excuses for his comrade’s negligence was understood.  Featherstone, however, was franker than he expected.

“There were good reasons for Lawrence’s not writing home and they made it awkward for us to write to him for a time.  You can now tell us what he has done in Canada.  We want to know.”

Foster began with some hesitation by relating how he had first met his comrade in the churned-up mud outside a logging camp after a dispute with the bullying manager.  The men were beaten, but Lawrence and two or three more from the river-gang would not give in, and started in the rain, without blankets and with very little food, which a sympathetic cook stole for them, on a long march to the nearest settlement.  There they took a contract for clearing land, and Foster described how they lived in a rude bark shack while they felled the trees and piled them up for burning.  It was strenuous work, and having been unable to collect their wages from the lumber firm, the clothes they could not replace went to pieces and they slept, for the most part, in the wet rags they wore by day.  But they held out until the work was done and paid for.  Foster tried to do his comrade justice and thought he had not exaggerated, for Lawrence’s philosophic good humor had encouraged the rest and smoothed over difficulties that threatened to break up the gang.

Then he stopped and glanced at the others, wondering whether he had said too much and had drawn a picture they shrank from contemplating.  Alice’s eyes were steadily fixed on him.  Mrs. Featherstone looked grave, but there was a hint of proud satisfaction in her husband’s face.  Somewhat to his surprise, Foster saw that he had not jarred or bored them.

“You made good; I believe that’s the proper phrase,” said Featherstone.  “Go on, please.”

Foster did so.  His adventures had not appeared remarkable when they happened, and he did not think himself much of a story-teller, but he meant to do his best, for his partner’s sake.  It would be something if he could show Lawrence’s people the courage and cheerfulness with which he had faced his troubles.  Still, he thought it better to vary the theme, and related how they engaged themselves as salesmen at a department store, where Lawrence rashly undertook to serve the drugs and prescribed for confiding customers until a mistake that might have had disastrous consequences led to his being fired.  Foster went with him, and they next undertook to cook, without any useful knowledge of the art, for a railroad construction gang.  Their incompetence became obvious when Lawrence attempted to save labor by putting a week’s supply of desiccated apples to soak at once, with the consequence that the floor of the caboose was covered with swollen fruit that had forced itself out of the pot.  One of the gang, who went in to steal some fried pork, declared that the blamed apples chased him down the steps.