Then she changed the subject abruptly. "Aunt, if you want to catch the New York mail, you will have to answer that letter to-night. You know that neither of us wants you to go." "Would you like to go back to England?" Carrie looked at the wheat and great sweep of prairie with glowing eyes. "I think I should be content wherever my husband went. There was a time when I fancied that if we had several good harvests and he sold Prospect, it would be nice to go back with him to the old country, but now I do not know. I seem to have grown since I came out here, and the prairie has, as he would say, got hold of me. It is so big and strenuous, there is so much in this country that is worth doing, and I think Charley is like it in many ways. No, I scarcely fancy he would ever be quite happy in England. But, after all, that is not the question. We want you. Do you feel you must go back again?" Her companion smiled a little. "I am not altogether sure that I do, but one has to consider a good many things. The house Florence writes about at Cransly is pretty and convenient, and, by sharing expenses, we could live there comfortably enough. Still, you know the life two elderly ladies would lead at Cransly, and after Barrock-holme--and Prospect--there are ways in which it would not appeal to me very strongly." "Oh, I know," and Carrie laughed. "You would be expected to set everybody a model of propriety, and to rule with the vicar's wife such society as there is in the place. You would have to know the exact shade of graciousness to bestow upon the wife of the local doctor, and how to check the presumptuous advances of the retired tradesman or the daughters of the stranger who settled within your borders. Isn't it all a little small and petty?" She turned once more to the prairie with a gesture of pride. "Ah," she said, "out here it's only what is essential that comes first. We open our gates to the stranger and give him our best, even when he comes on foot in dusty jean. It's manhood that counts for everything, and Charley and the others are always opening the gates a little wider. We take all who come, the poor and the outcast, and ask no questions. One has only to look round and see what the prairie has made of them. Aunt, I think the greatest thing in human nature is the faith of the optimist. No, I shall stay here, and you will stay with me." "I think a little would naturally depend upon what Charley wants." Carrie laughed. "Well," she said, "we will ascertain his views. He is not as a rule very diffident about expressing them." Tom Gallwey, somewhat lightly dressed, drove up just then in a waggon piled with grain bags. "Where is Charley?" she asked. Gallwey smiled. "Lifting four-bushel wheat sacks into a waggon. He has been doing it most of the afternoon, too, and I almost think it would be wise if you looked after him."