“That doesn’t look like a very strong indorsement,” Nora admitted.

The next day Nora woke to a world of such dazzling whiteness that she was blinded every time she attempted to look out on it.

“You want to be careful,” her husband cautioned her; “getting snow-blinded isn’t as much fun as you’d think.  Even I get bad sometimes; and I’m used to it.  Looks like one of them Christmas cards, don’t it?  Somebody sent Gertie one once and she showed it to us.”

That afternoon, Mr. Sharp drove his wife down for the promised visit.  As in his judgment the two women would want to be alone, he proposed to Frank to drive back home with him to give him the benefit of his opinion on some improvements he was contemplating.

“You’re only wasting your time,” Mrs. Sharp had remarked grimly.  “There ain’t going to be anything done to any of them barns before I get a lean-to on the house.  You’d think even a man would know that a house that’s all right for two gets a little small for seven,” she added, scornfully, to Nora.

“Are there seven of you?”

“Me and Sid and five little ones.  If that don’t make seven, I’ve forgotten all the ’rithmetic I ever learned,” said Mrs. Sharp briefly.  “And let me tell you, you who’re just starting in, that having children out here on the prairie half the time with no proper care, and particularly in winter, when maybe you’re snowed up and the doctor can’t get to you, ain’t my idea of a bank holiday.”

“I shouldn’t think it would be,” said Nora, sincerely shocked, although she found it difficult to hide a smile at her visitor’s comparison; bank holidays being among her most horrid recollections.

Mrs. Sharp, despite a rather emphatic manner which softened noticeably as her visit progressed, turned out to be a stout, red-faced woman of middle age who seemed to be troubled with a chronic form of asthma.  She was as unmistakably English as her husband.  But like him, she had lost much of her native accent, although occasionally one caught a faint trace of the Cockney.  She had two rather keen brown eyes which, as she talked, took in the room to its smallest detail.

“Well, I declare, I think you’ve done wonders considering you’ve only had a day and not used to work like this,” she said heartily.  “When Sid told me that Frank was bringing home a wife I said to myself:  ’Well, I don’t envy her her job; comin’ to a shack that ain’t been lived in for nigh unto six months and when it was, with only a man runnin’ it.’”

“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of men’s ability in the domestic line,” said Nora with a smile.

“I can tell you just how high it is,” said Mrs. Sharp with decision.  “I would just as soon think of consultin’ little Sid—­an’ he’s goin’ on three—­about the housekeepin’ as I would his father.  It ain’t a man’s work.  Why should he know anything about it?”

“Still,” demurred Nora, “lots of men look after themselves somehow.”