“He is a most superior man, I can see that. He has read everything I ever did and more too. And do you know, Ezra, I shouldn’t wonder if he had leanings towards community-life, many things he said pointed that way. Wouldn’t it be funny if I were to be the one to bring in your first convert, poor little me that never had any leanings until I saw you.” Ezra looked sharply at his wife during this speech, for a sudden and by no means pleasant suspicion sprang into his mind concerning the mysterious Mr. Perseus. However, Olive looked so perfectly innocent of even all knowledge of evil that he felt ashamed of himself. “I wouldn’t be too friendly with this man. We don’t know anything about him, nor who he is, remember,” remarked Ezra. “He said he knew you and that you were a fine-looking man, you old dear, and he is acquainted with most of the members of the Community by sight. Besides, I thought it was a point of etiquette on the prairie to make no inquiries into a person’s character, but to take him in his boots just as he stands, and ask him to dinner. Don’t you remember Charlie Clarke, and how he came to supper by your invitation and you found him so pleasant, and he a horse-thief and a murderer all the while, only we didn’t know it.” This was all very true, but Charlie Clarke had evinced no “leanings” to community-life, and above all Olive had been profoundly uninterested in him and was delighted when he left. Ezra hated himself for the feeling in his heart, but he had his suspicions of Mr. Perseus, and he knew his wife was distractingly pretty. So he advised her to keep aloof from Mr. Perseus as much as practicable. Several times afterwards he made excuses to go riding with her, which Olive enjoyed immensely, but then something was said to her about his shirking his share of the work, and she was furiously angry. She wanted her husband to be first, and since the only theatre for the exhibition of his abilities was the somewhat restricted one of Perfection City, she wanted him to be always near the front. “Shirking indeed!” she said tossing her pretty head. “I’ll have Mary Winkle know my husband never shirked in his life.” In a blaze of wrath she met Ezra and ordered him to go to work and never mind riding with her till the harvest was over. She wouldn’t ride any more, she would work until she was black in the face. Shirking indeed! She’d let Mary Winkle see! And so on and so forth, till her burst of anger had spent itself.