“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 unobservant Eddie noted with approval.

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