“Sid says we’ve only got it in one place.  But perhaps he’s only saying it, so as I shouldn’t worry.  But you know what them inspectors are; they don’t lose nothin’ by it.  It don’t matter to them if you starve all winter!”

Suddenly she began to cry.  Great sobs wracked her heavy frame.  The big tears rolled down her cheeks.  Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hardships she had endured, or of the little one she had lost.  She was greatly moved, for this good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.

“Oh, don’t—­don’t cry, dear Mrs. Sharp.  After all, it may all turn out right.”

“They won’t condemn the whole crop unless it’s very bad, you know,” Marsh reminded her.  “Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company.”

Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking.  She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.

“What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you’re beginning to count on it, and now the weed!” She had to stop again for a moment.  “I can’t bear any more.  If we lose this crop, I won’t go on.  I’ll make Sid sell out, and we’ll go back home.  We’ll take a little shop somewhere.  That’s what I wanted to do from the beginning.  But Sid—­Sid always had his heart set on farming.”

“But you couldn’t go back now,” said Nora, her face aglow, “you couldn’t.  You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you’ve had out here.  And think; if you’d stayed back in England, you’d have always been at the beck and call of somebody else.  And you own your land.  You couldn’t do that back in England.  Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren’t you proud to think that it’s all yours?  I know you are.  I’ve seen it in your face.”

“You don’t know all that I’ve had to put up with.  When the children came, only once did I have a doctor.  All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had.  I might as well have been an animal!  I wish I’d never left home and come to this country, that I do!”

“How can you say that?  Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are.  And think what a future they will have.  Why, they’ll be able to help you both in your work soon.  You’ve given them a chance; they’d never have had a chance back home.  You know that.”

“Oh, it’s all very well for them.  They’ll have it easy, I know that.  Easier than their poor father and mother ever had.  But we’ve had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me.  They’ll never know what we paid.”

“Ah, but don’t you see that it is because you were the first?” said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm.  Mrs. Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora’s return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself.  But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear.  He nodded his approval.