"I'm not at all fond of kissing," said Nora coolly. Frank grinned at her, his pipe stuck between his white teeth. "It ain't, generally speaking, an acquired taste. I guess you must be peculiar." "It looks like it," she said lightly. "Come, my girl," he said, getting slowly up from his stool, "you didn't even kiss me after we was married." "Isn't a hint enough for you?"--her tone was perfectly friendly. "Why do you insist on my saying everything in so many words? Why make me dot my i's and cross my t's, so to speak?" "It seems to me it wants a few words to make it plain when a woman refuses to give her husband a kiss." "Do sit down, there's a good fellow, and I'll tell you one or two things." "That's terribly kind of you," he said, sinking into the rocker. "Have you any choice of seats?" "Not now, since you've taken the only one that's tolerably comfortable. I think there's nothing to choose between the others." "Nothing, I should say." "I think we'd better fix things up before we go any further," she said, resuming her stool. "Sure." "You gave me to understand very plainly that you wanted a wife in order to get a general servant without having to pay her wages. Wages are high, here in Canada." "That was the way _you_ put it." "Batching isn't very comfortable, you'll confess that?" "I'll confess that, all right." "You wanted someone to cook and bake for you, wash, sweep and mend. I offered to come and do all that for you. It never entered my head for an instant that there was any possibility of your expecting anything else of me." "Then you're a damned fool, my girl." He was perfectly good-natured. She would have preferred him to be a little angry. She would know how to cope with that, she thought. But she flared up a little herself. "D'you mind not saying things like that to me?" His smile widened. "I guess I'll have to say a good many things like that--or worse--before we've done." "I asked you to marry me only because I couldn't stay in the shack otherwise." "You asked me to marry you because you was in the hell of a temper," he retorted. "You were mad clean through. You wanted to get away from Ed's farm right then and there and you didn't care what you did so long as you quit. But you was darned sorry for what you'd done by the time you'd got your trunk packed." "I don't know that you have any reason for thinking that," she said stiffly. "I've got sense. Besides, when you opened the door when I went up and knocked, you was as white as a sheet. You'd have given anything you had to say you'd changed your mind, but your damned pride wouldn't let you." "I wouldn't have stayed longer in that house for anything in the world," said Nora with passion.