For Tom Meadowburn the world, whether of New Orleans or Winnipeg, or the new city that had lately taken them in, was a place where he and the wife and children were “getting on.” The Meadowburn household was, in his mind, something very much like heaven, himself presiding. For Ellen, as he often said, it was a refuge under his protecting arm, wherein she need never come to harm nor suffer want. And to her credit she believed him and worked all the harder to please him. Physically Meadowburn was a tall stout man with a heavy, pink, unwhiskered face, the pale eyelashes and tow hair being lighter than his skin, and the small, quick eyes a transparent, hardly perceptible blue. As a humourist he was not one of your torrential and generous laughers. He was sly and dry, a wrinkle, the flicker of a smile, a knowing arch of the eyebrows being his favourite manner of accentuating his point. He was in the habit of twitting Ellen on the subject of marriage. “Now then, my girl,” he would say, “what are you keeping from us? What have you got up your sleeve? Didn’t I hear you come in a little late last night? Walking, eh--of course, not _alone_? We wouldn’t permit you to walk alone.” “Ellen went to the drugstore for some medicine for me, last night, Tom,” interposed his wife. “Well, well, Ellen,” he went on, “you must remember you’re perfectly free. We wouldn’t keep you from marrying when the right man comes along.” “Yes, and maybe I will marry, sooner than you think! You watch out, Mr. Meadowburn!” The pleasure of this stock joke lay in the fact that none of the Meadowburns believed there was danger of Ellen marrying, of any one caring to marry her, at least, whose social position would suit her. For she did not have kitchen-maid standards, as they knew. And she believed there was no danger either. She felt very old.... It was into this somewhat harsh and lonely existence that Potter had thrust his genial, boyish appearance, and by some strange affinity of comradeship, they had taken to each other at once. He too, as she was soon to learn, was lonely and cherished his dreams; and it comforted her to have a champion--even so young and small a champion as he. Was he so young and small? There were times when he frightened her with flashes of grown-up speech. It did not always seem quite nice, quite appropriate. For example, one evening when they were talking about perfectly ordinary matters, he burst out: “You’re like Christ, Ellen. If He could be on earth He wouldn’t love Dr. Minor or any of those people in the church. He’d pick you.”