Brown’s face grew serious.  “It’s a fact, they are suspicious, frightfully.  I have been talking school to them, but they won’t have a school as a gift.  My Church, the Presbyterian, you know, offers to put up a school for them, since the Government won’t do anything, but they are mightily afraid that this is some subtle scheme for extracting money from them.  But what can you expect?  The only church they know has bled them dry, and they fear and hate the very name of church.”

“By Jove!  I don’t wonder,” said French.

“Nor do I.”

“But look here, Brown,” said French, “you don’t mean to tell me,—­I assure you I don’t wish to be rude,—­but you don’t mean to tell me that you have come here, a man of your education and snap—­”

“Thank you,” said Brown.

“To teach a lot of Galician children.”

“Well,” said Brown, “I admit I have come partially for my health.  You see, I am constitutionally inclined—­”

“Oh, come now,” said French, “as my friend Kalman would remark, cut it out.”

“Partially for my health, and partially for the good of the country.  These people here exist as an undigested foreign mass.  They must be digested and absorbed into the body politic.  They must be taught our ways of thinking and living, or it will be a mighty bad thing for us in Western Canada.  Do you know, there are over twenty-five thousand of them already in this country?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said French, “but they’ll learn our ways fast enough.  And as for teaching their children, pardon me, but it seems to me you are too good a man to waste in that sort of thing.  Why, bless my soul, you can get a girl for fifty dollars a month who would teach them fast enough.  But you—­now you could do big things in this country, and there are going to be big things doing here in a year or two.”

“What things?” said Brown with evident interest.

“Oh, well, ranching, farming on a big scale, building railroads, lumber up on the hills, then, later, public life.  We will be a province, you know, one of these days, and the men who are in at the foundation making will stand at the top later on.”

“You’re all right,” cried Brown, his eyes alight with enthusiasm.  “There will be big things doing, and, believe me, this is one of them.”

“What?  Teaching a score of dirty little Galicians?  The chances are you’ll spoil them.  They are good workers as they are.  None better.  They are easy to handle.  You go in and give them some of our Canadian ideas of living and all that, and before you know they are striking for higher wages and giving no end of trouble.”

“You would suppress the school, then, in Western Canada?” said Brown.

“No, not exactly.  But if you educate these fellows, you hear me, they’ll run your country, by Jove! in half a dozen years, and you wouldn’t like that much.”

“That’s exactly it,” replied Brown; “they’ll run your country anyhow you put it, school or no school, and, therefore, you had better fit them for the job.  You have got to make them Canadian.”