Page:Arthur Stranger--The Stranger.djvu/9

Rh road that ribboned cityward between orchard and woodland and hillside already flaming with the tints of autumn.

"It's a great country, this Canada of ours," proclaimed Hardy, easily, from a hill-top that unfolded before them a still wider prospect of sun-bathed farmlands and hamlets and clustered homes. "And she's going to hum, now we've got the war over and we're getting back into our stride again. Yes, sir, it's a great country!"

"Is it?" somewhat wistfully asked the stranger with the far-away look in his eyes.

Hardy's laugh was a confident one.

"Look what it did over there in the Big Fight! A quarter of a million of the Lion's whelps, at the first growl from the Old Mother! And when it came to spear-heads, Canucks every time, when they knew the push would be a hard one! And sticking to the job until it was finished, and finished right!"

"Then you regard it as finished?"

"Well, we're not studying German verbs and goose-stepping up to a Bismarck-herring burgomeister with taxes for Clown Prince Willie's women and racing-stables. And that's finish enough for me!"

"Then everything has been done?" asked the wistful-eyed stranger, "everything that Canada and the Empire needs?"

"There are the loose ends, of course," conceded the man of business with a shrug. "Somebody's got to get after them. But the fire's out, and the Kaiser's playing beaver round the tree butts over at Huis-Doorn, and that Armistice-Day hub-bub, naturally, isn't the sort of thing that can last over-night."

"I infer, then, that you served and suffered in this war?" queried the sombre figure at Hardy's side.

A cloud settled on the rubicund face with the grizzled temples.

"No, I stayed right here and stuck to business," he acknowledged. "But I rather think I did my share. I held jobs open for every boy from The Works who went over. I dug down for every drive that came along. And I took up a good big chunk of each of our war loans, even when—"

"That was a sacrifice," murmured the man at his side. And Hardy was quick to detect and resent a note of irony in that interruption.