The feeling that she had been put in the wrong, even if not very tactfully, did not tend to lessen Nora’s annoyance.  She looked appealingly at her brother, but he, leaning back in his chair and seeing that his wife’s eyes were bent on her plate, shook his head at her, smiling slightly.

“If everyone has finished,” said Gertie after an awkward pause, “if you’ll all move your chairs away I’ll clear away the things.”

“May I help you?” said Nora with an effort at conciliation.

“No, thanks.”

“No, no.  You’re company to-night,” said her brother with a man’s relief at finding an unpleasant situation at an end.  “But I daresay to-morrow Gertie’ll find plenty for you to do.  We’ll all be out till dinner time.  You girls will have a lot to talk over while you’re getting acquainted.”

Hornby groaned dismally.

“It doesn’t make any difference what the weather is in this blessed country,” he said dismally to Nora, “you have to go out whether there’s really anything to do or not.”

“That’s so,” laughed Taylor; “still I think you’ll admit the Boss always manages to find something to fill up the time.”

“That he does,” said Hornby with another hollow groan.

“The last time I saw you,” said Nora, “you were calling poor old England all sorts of dreadful names.  Isn’t farming in Canada all your fancy painted it?”

Gertie paused in the act of pouring water from the kettle into the dishpan.  “Not a bit like it,” she said dryly.  “He’s like most of the English I’ve run up against.  They think all you’ve got to do is just to sit down and have afternoon tea and watch the crops grow by themselves.”

“Oh, come now, Gertie.  You’ve never had to accuse me of loafing, and I’m an Englishman,” said her husband good-naturedly.

“I said ‘most.’”

“And as for afternoon tea,” broke in Hornby, “I don’t believe they have that sacred institution in the whole blessed country.”

“You have tea with all your meals.  Men out here have something else to do but sit indoors afternoons and eat between meals.”

“Do you know,” said Nora after a pause, “it isn’t nearly so cold as I expected to find it.  Don’t you usually have it much colder than this?”

“It’s rarely colder until later in the season.  But Frank, here, who’s our champion weather prophet, says it’s going to be an exceptional season with hardly any snow at all.”

Nora had been conscious all through the evening that Taylor had hardly once taken his eyes from her face.  She looked directly at him for the first time, to find him watching her with a look of quiet amusement.

“That would indeed be an exceptional season, if all one hears of the rigors of the climate be true,” she said coldly.

“Every season in this country is exceptional,” he said humorously; “if it isn’t exceptional one way, it’s sure to be exceptional the other.”