"This is my diggings," our host was saying. "A little crowded inside, but plenty of room outside. The law of compensation, you know. Have to do for the present. Beastly expensive business farming. We'll have some tea presently, if there's any spirit left in the spirit lamp. Sorry I can't offer you anything better." So he rattled on and made us feel very much at home, even while I found rising in my heart some yearning of sympathy for him. I recalled the incident about Jake and Spoof's sixty pounds, and I supposed that was but one of many similar experiences in the life of this young seed of Empire. That was the price of being a "greenhorn". When I spoke a little while ago of railways and governments being fair prey, I should have added greenhorns. "It's the only way to treat 'em," Jake defended the custom of the country when I took him to task about it afterwards. "They're jus' like bronchoes--not worth a dang until they're broke. Then they'll work." Evidently Spoof had come to the point where he was willing to work, but certainly not to allow work to interfere with his social engagements. Fragments of harness about the door of the tent indicated the line of his effort just before we had come up, but now he was pouring tea and helping sugar and biscuits and cheese with a grace of manner which made Jack and me and even Marjorie a little ill at ease. We had an uncomfortable feeling of being out of our class, as one does when he listens to a conversation in which his limitations will allow him to take little part. Only Jean seemed to wholly enjoy it; she was talking with him about prairie cloudscapes, and seemed to have quite forgotten herself in her enthusiasm. As I listened I marvelled how wonderful Jean's voice was; it was not harsh or guttural or uneven, but seemed to flow in a liquid, limpid stream, tinkling and rippling and running in happy little rills. It must have sounded very sweet to English ears. Spoof, too, seemed to enjoy the conversation, and to react to the music of Jean's voice. He was too fine mannered to monopolize the stage with any one of his guests; occasionally he threw conversational feelers at Marjorie, and Jack, and me, but we were slow in the up-take, and before we quite knew what he was talking about the dialogue had again passed back to Jean. She seemed to have a grasp of things, of delicate, thoughtful, artistic things, far beyond any gift of ours. I was astonished and a bit terrified by the gulf which I now found spreading between her plane and mine. I had not been conscious of that gulf before. I had not failed to appreciate Jean's charms, but never before had I realized how high her level was above mine; never before had I felt myself unworthy of her; never had I known the lurking fear that some one, of finer clay than I, might claim her in the end.