Was there ever anything so absurd, so disconcerting? He looked forward
gloomily to a dull afternoon, in quest of fat cattle, with a car-full of
unknown Canadians.



CHAPTER IV

At three o'clock, in the wide Winnipeg station, there gathered on the
platform beside Lady Merton's car a merry and motley group of people. A
Chief Justice from Alberta, one of the Senators for Manitoba, a rich
lumberman from British Columbia, a Toronto manufacturer--owner of the
model farm which the party was to inspect, two or three ladies, among
them a little English girl with fine eyes, whom Philip Gaddesden at once
marked for approval; and a tall, dark-complexioned man with hollow
cheeks, large ears, and a long chin, who was introduced, with particular
emphasis, to Elizabeth by Anderson, as "Mr. Félix Mariette"--Member of
Parliament, apparently, for some constituency in the Province of Quebec.

The small crowd of persons collected, all eminent in the Canadian world,
and some beyond it, examined their hostess of the afternoon with a
kindly amusement. Elizabeth had sent round letters; Anderson, who was
well known, it appeared, in Winnipeg, had done a good deal of
telephoning. And by the letters and the telephoning this group of busy
people had allowed itself to be gathered; simply because Elizabeth was
her father's daughter, and it was worth while to put such people in the
right way, and to send them home with some rational notions of the
country they had come to see.

And she, who at home never went out of her way to make a new