“But do you know much about farming?”

“I don’t.  As a matter of fact, not many of the boys do know much when they begin, but somehow they make progress.  On the plains, it isn’t what you know that counts, but the capacity for work and staying with your job.  That’s what one really needs, if you see what I mean.”

“I think I do,” Miss Jardine replied.  “A Victorian philosopher, whose opinions you seem to hold, said something of the kind.  He claims that genius takes many different forms, but is not different in itself.  That is, if you have talent, you can do what you like.  Build railroads, for example, and then succeed on a farm.”

Festing laughed good-humoredly.  “It’s a pretty big thing to claim, but that man was near the mark; they live up to his theories on the plains, where shams don’t count and efficiency’s the test.  I don’t mean that the boys have genius, but gift and perseverance seem to be worth as much.  Anyhow, one can generally trust them to make good when they undertake a job they don’t know much about.”

Helen mused.  Charnock, who knew something about farming, had tried it and failed, but she thought Festing would succeed.  The man looked determined and, in a way, ascetic; he could deny himself and concentrate.  Knowledge was not worth as much as character.  But she was content to let Miss Jardine lead the talk.

“One understands,” said the latter, “that farming’s laborious and not very profitable work.”

“It’s always laborious,” Festing agreed.  “It may be profitable; that depends.  You see——­”

He went on, using plain words but with some force of imagination, to picture the wheat-grower’s hopes and struggles; but he did more, for as he talked Helen was conscious of the romance that underlay the patient effort.  She saw the empty, silent land rolling back to the West; the ox-teams slowly breaking the first furrow, and then the big Percheron horses and gasoline tractors taking their place.  Wooden shacks dotted the white grass, the belts of green wheat widened, wagons, and afterwards automobiles, lurched along the rutted trails.  Then the railroad came, brick homestead and windmills rose, and cities sprang up, as it were, in a night.  Everything was fluid, there was no permanence; rules and customs altered before they got familiar, a new nation, with new thoughts and aims, was rising from the welter of tense activity.

Then Festing got up with an apologetic air.  “I’m afraid I’ve stopped too long and talked too much.  Still the big movement out there is fascinating and people in this country don’t grasp its significance.  I felt I’d like to make you understand.  Then you didn’t seem—­”

“If we had been bored, it would have been our fault, but we were not bored at all,” Miss Jardine replied.  “At least, I wasn’t, and don’t think Helen was.”

Helen added her denial and gave Festing her hand.  When he had gone Miss Jardine looked at her with a smile.