“Not much, I don’t,” said Brown.  “I select my patients.”

“Thank you,” said French.  “I take this as a mark of extreme hospitality.  By the way, where is your own pipe?”

“I have abjured.”

“What?”

“Abjured.”

“And yet you have many of the marks of sanity.”

“Sanity!  You just note it, and the most striking is that I don’t have a pipe.”

“Expound me the riddle, please.”

“The exposition is simple enough.  I am constitutionally lazy and self-indulgent, and almost destitute of self-control—­”

“And permit me to interject without offence, an awful liar,” said French pleasantly.  “Go on.”

“I came out here to work.  With a pipe and a few pounds of that mixture—­”

“Pounds!  Ah!” ejaculated French.

“I would find myself immersed in dreamy seas of vaporous and idle bliss—­do you catch that combination?—­and fancy myself, mark you, busy all the time.  It is the smoker’s dementia accentuated by such a mixture as this, that while he is blowing rings he imagines he is doing something—­”

“The deuce he does!  And he is jolly well right.”

“So, having something other to do than blow rings, I have abjured the pipe.  There are other reasons, but that will suffice.”

“Abundantly,” said French with emphasis, “and permit me to remark that you have been talking rot.”

Brown shook his head with a smile.

“Now tell me,” continued French, “what is your idea?  What have you in view in planting yourself down here?  In short, to put it bluntly, what are you doing?”

“Doing nothing, as yet,” said Brown cheerfully, “but I want to do a lot.  I have got this Galician colony in my eye.”

“I beg your pardon,” said French, “are you by any chance a preacher?”

“Well, I may be, though I can’t preach much.  But my main line is the kiddies.  I can teach them English, and then I am going to doctor them, and, if they’ll let me, teach them some of the elements of domestic science; in short, do anything to make them good Christians and good Canadians, which is the same thing.”

“That is a pretty large order.  Look here, now,” said French, sitting up, “you look like a sensible fellow, and open to advice.  Don’t be an ass and throw yourself away.  I know these people well.  In a generation or two something may be done with them.  You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you know.  Give it up.  Take up a ranch and go cattle raising.  That is my advice.  I know them.  You can’t undo in your lifetime the results of three centuries.  It’s a hopeless business.  I tried myself to give them some pointers when they came in first, and worried a good deal about it.  I got myself disliked for my pains and suffered considerable annoyance.  Now I leave them beautifully alone.  Their suspicions have vanished and they no longer look at me as if I were a thief.”