“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to make the best of things and meet her half-way.  You must make allowances for her even if you think her unreasonable.  It’s Gertie you’ve got to spend most of your time with.”

He was so manifestly distressed and, as he hadn’t been so hard on her as she had expected and in her own heart felt that she deserved, Nora softened at once.

“I’ll have a try.”

“That’s a good girl.  And I think you ought to apologize to her for what you said just now.”

“I?” said Nora, aflame at once.  “I’ve got nothing to apologize for.  She drove me to distraction.”

There was a moment’s pause while Eddie softly damned the pipe he had forgotten to fill, for not keeping lighted.

“She says she won’t speak to you again unless you beg her pardon.”

“Really!  Does she look upon that as a great hardship?”

“My dear!  We’re twelve miles from the nearest store.  We’re thrown upon each other for the entire winter.  Last year there was a bad blizzard, and we didn’t see a soul outside the farm for six weeks.  Unless we learn to put up with one another’s whims, life becomes a perfect hell.”

Nora stopped her work and set down her iron.

“You can go on talking all night, Eddie, I’ll never apologize.  Time after time when she sneered at me till my blood boiled, I’ve kept my temper.  She deserved ten times more than I said.  Do you think I’m going to knuckle under to a woman like that?”

“Remember she’s my wife, Nora.”

“Why didn’t you marry a lady?”

“What the dickens do you think is the use of being a lady out here?”

“You’ve degenerated since you left England.”

“Now look here, my dear, I’ll just tell you what Gertie did for me.  She was a waitress in Winnipeg at the Minnedosa Hotel, and she was making money.  She knew what the life was on a farm—­much harder than anything she’d been used to in the city—­but she accepted all the hardship of it and the monotony of it, because—­because she loved me.”

“She thought it a good match.  You were a gentleman.”

“Fiddledidee!  She had the chance of much better men than me.  And when——­”

“Such men as Frank Taylor, no doubt.”

“And when I lost my harvest two years running, do you know what she did?  She went back to the hotel in Winnipeg for the winter, so as to carry things on till the next harvest.  And at the end of the winter, she gave me every cent she’d earned to pay the interest of my mortgage and the installments on the machinery.”

Nora had been more moved by this recital than she would have cared to confess.  She turned away her head to hide that her eyes had filled with tears.  After all, a woman who could show such devotion as that, and to her brother——­ Yes, she would try again.

“Very well:  I’ll apologize.  But leave me alone with her.  I—­I don’t think I could do it even before you, Eddie.”