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Ranching for Sylvia by Harold Bindloss
page 94 of 418 (22%)
supplies when they went north after moose. It would have been a
catastrophe if they had missed their dinner."

"Going without one's dinner has its inconveniences," said George.

"And thinking too much about it has its perils," she retorted.

George nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with
it. He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by
degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to
which they had confined their efforts. Some had become mere club
loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence. This
had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful,
and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities
until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.

"Well," he said, "nobody could call this a good country for the
pampered loafer."

Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie. In the foreground it
was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs
stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond
them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline. It was almost
beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a
sense of vastness and solitude. The effect was somehow daunting. One
thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.

"I've heard it called hard," she said. "It undoubtedly needs hard men;
there is nothing here that can be easily won. That's a fact that the
people you're sending over ought to recognize."
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