"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss—aren't you sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering idiot."

"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?"

"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded the girl with a bright and tender approval.

"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice."

"For the third and last time—no!" Sir William responded, flipping her ear; "this ice is cold enough: it has clotted every vein in my bally forehead. I say, kitten, isn't that somebody knocking?"

The knock which sounded on the door—that of the small sitting-room of Sir William's bedroom suite—was clumsily-knuckled and hesitating. It sounded once, audibly—then a second time, feebly—and, after the second knock, the scuffle of a heavy foot receding indicated that the knocker was going away without entering. Daisy went quickly and opened the door.

"Come on, Dad," she said.

Nixon stopped in the hall, his back half-turned, and spoke to his foster-daughter over-shoulder.

"You go on about your business a while," he said, gruffly, "I want to talk to the boss."

Ware, hearing this dialogue from his chair, smiled queerly to himself.

"Right-O," he called, "run along, my dear, for a jiffy; see if Mother has any messages for us. Come on, Nixon, old chap!"

Reddening in an odd way at the cordial tone, John Nixon, his hands hanging awkwardly and his beard canted aside in a sheepish attitude, came in, pushing the door shut behind him. He lowered himself into the nearest chair.

"How are you?" said Sir William, humorously and companionably, "I say—that was a jolly cataclysm! Lucky to get off with our lives, what?" Nixon, sheepish but still characteristically blunt, came straight to his point.

"I wouldn't have got off with no life," he said, "if you hadn't slung me out o' the way and got stepped on yourself."

"Rubbish!" said Ware, briefly; "all the same, it's good of you to put it that way, old chap. Makes me feel less mortified at my stupidity in standing there like a post and getting knocked down. Let's jolly well talk of something else."

John Nixon's head came up and back. He put his right hand down on his knee-cap with a slap that could be heard across the room.

"Don't you go tryin' for to head me off, English," he said, "I done wrong and I'm a-goin' to own up to it. Here, I been walkin' around your nice house here, a-spittin' all over the floor as if it was a hotel—it kind of seems like that to me, because we don't sling on no style out west here—and all because I never did like an Englishman. They always make me contrairy. When I'm with an Englishman, I talk rough and go bullin' around, just to be the opposite to what I think he is—"

Sir William leaned out over the arm of his chair and extended his uninjured hand toward Nixon.

"Put her there, as you say in Canada," he said, beamingly, "Nixon, you're a brick. And if we English make you Canadians feel contrary, I'll admit we bring it on ourselves. We, too, are a contrary people; and the more you try to put on this roughness of manner, which is not your own, the more we try to put on this finicky niceness, which so rubs you the wrong way. Just because we desire to rub you the wrong way. And so we see-saw, back and forth, until eventually we come to fisticuffs, or worse. Nixon, I believe you've hit the peg on which hangs the whole difficulty between England and Canada. Now that we two understand each other, let's set an example to our peoples: let's be natural. Put her there, I say."

John Nixon put her there, and the two shook hands—an inter-imperial handshake.

"How would you like for to come out to my place a while, English?" he said, after a moment. "As I said, we don't sling on no style nor nothin', but we never know what it is to go hungry. The roof don't let in no rain, neither; and you can't sleep on nothin' more comfortable than a bedtick stuffed with prairie hay."

"Ripping!" Sir William, "knocked about" as he was, all but hoisted himself to his feet in his enthusiasm; "I say, Nixon, when shall we start?"

"Next train, if you say so. Anyway," John Nixon rubbed an eyebrow with his gray-bristled forefinger, "I'm worryin' about the stock, and I want to get back home. Got any drinkin-water around, English?"

Sir William was about to touch the bell, when Nixon, glancing toward the bathroom, saw basin, tap and tumbler.

"Don't ring, for me," he said, getting up, "I can work the fasset myself, without no help botherin' around."

As his guest returned from the bathroom, sweeping the water-drops from his beard by drawing his hand down over it, Sir William said:

"Will you be offended if I ask you a question—a straight question—Nixon, old chap?"

"You couldn't offend me now, English," said John Nixon, "anyhow straight questions goes, between us, after this. That's our agreement, ain't it?"

"That's it, exactly," said Ware, "so my question is this: Why do you persist in calling me 'English'? It sounds a bit like some sort of an imputation. Do you see my point?"

"I don't foller you," said John Nixon, as he laid his hand on the door-knob; "the only reason I call you 'English' is because your reel name keeps slippin' my mind."

"It shouldn't be hard to remember," said Ware.

"What is it?" queried Nixon.

"To you, henceforth," said the baronet, "it is—Bill."

"Yes, that's you, all over again," said Lovina Nixon, late that evening, as she thrust into her iron-gray hair two or three matutinal hairpins, in places where they would not jab her, and clambered into bed, "astin' these tony English people out to the farm, to turn up their noses at everything. Well, Daise'll have to look after them, for I got enough to do with the housework and the milkin'. Is the old woman coming along, too?"

John Nixon yawned, turned his back to her, and wrapped around himself two-thirds of the bed-clothes.

"You go on to sleep," he said, "you'll feel better in the mornin'."

Lovina, however, continued on rebelliously, although the rest of her grumbling was sunk to a smothered monotone by her nightly habit of sleeping with the blankets over her head; but her last thought before she dropped off to sleep was that now at last she would have a chance to bring from the back of the farmhouse cupboard the "weddin' set" of neat china that had been waiting there during nearly a quarter of a century for an appropriate guest.

"No, I don't think I shall go, William," said Lady Frances, adjusting the cushion at the back of her son's head and handing him the evening newspaper, "this northwest winter is here now—don't forget that it's November, not May, outside—and the plan sounds to me rather too much like Polar exploration. You say you intend to go out for the winter. Well, if you survive the experience, perhaps I shall join you in the spring. But surely you're not going to start on this wild expedition the way you are. I am told it is difficult to go on snowshoes with a crutch. Those people, too! William, you are insane."

"Mother, dear," Ware patted the capable old hand that rested on his chair-arm, "you said that once before, you remember. And that reminds me—we haven't discussed this with Daisy. Let's have her in now, if she's about."

"She's about," rejoined Lady Frances—a little sarcastically, but with an unconcealed accent of motherly affection—, "she's having tea with McTavish, the cook."