says she can't speak a word of English."
"But 'Peter Ross' is Scotch, isn't it? At least you can't make it
French, however you twist it"
"I'm not anxious to twist it. Don't you see, Arthur, she is
evidently a Frenchwoman who married a man called Peter Ross; she is
the _veuve_, widow, you know! of the lamented Scotchman. Now do you
understand? But it _is_ peculiar."
"Very," said Clarges. "When do we start?"
"There's a train to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but I thought
we had better hire a trap, and a man to bring the trap back, and put
all our things, tents and so on, into it, and go out comfortably so
as to see the country."
"All right!" said Clarges. "By Jove, what a splendid night it's
going to be, stars out already, Bovey! Don't you hope it'll be like
this tomorrow? Shall we camp out the first night and think of--of--
Lady Violet by our camp fire, and Rex and Florence--how they'd like
to see us, wouldn't they? And they can't, you know, they're three
thousand miles away, trying to make out each other's faces in the
November fog, eh! Bovey? I say, what shall we get to eat out there,
at Lachatte, you know, the country always makes me desperately hungry."
"Oh! we shall do well enough. Simpson says she is a capital old woman,
lives entirely alone; will cook for us, wait on us, make us pancakes,
I expect, and give us plenty of that stuff we had this morning at
the hotel"
"Sweet stuff?" asked Clarges. "_I_ know. Syrup, maple syrup, that'll
do."
Simpson, the authority, thrice quoted by the elder of the two
Englishmen, appeared at dinner with them that evening. He was a
hard-working, stodgy son of person who had come out to the Canadian
Civil Service fifteen years, ago, lived much by himself until he
took a wife out of a Canadian village, a phlegmatic, stolid,
unimaginative sort of a girl, who was nevertheless a good wife and an
excellent housekeeper. Simpson sniffed at the dinner. It wasn't as
good as his own. He felt ill at ease in the presence of the two men,
whose airy talk and loud laughter struck him with a keen sense of
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