Harold Edward Bindloss

“ The remark was evidently overheard, as perhaps Kinnaird intended. One of the others laughed.
"Ralph Weston was never punctual in his life," he said.
"Considering everything," observed one of the women standing near Ida, "it is rather curious that Weston should have promised to come at all. It must be a trifle embarrassing to dine at one's own place as another man's guest."
"Oh," said the man beside her, "Weston would go anywhere for a good dinner and a good glass of wine." ”

“ It depends on how much the man who undertook it wanted back to make the thing worth while."
"They are content with food, and sometimes very indifferent shelter, in western Canada."
"There," said Ainslie, "you have the thing in a nutshell. You have, no doubt, formed some idea of Weston's wants, which are rather numerous. In fact, some of us seem to consider it the correct thing to cultivate them. The more wants you have the greater man you are." ”

“ Still, what can you expect when they pile up the taxes on us, and open new doors continually to the foreigners? We grew wheat at Scarthwaite, and it was ground at Ramside mill. The last time I looked in, Harvey had his stores full of flour from Minneapolis and Winnipeg. I asked him whether he didn't feel ashamed of having any hand in that kind of thing."
Ida could not check a smile. In Weston's case, at least, the reason why western wheat had displaced the local product was tolerably plain. ”

“ They were, until a few decades ago, usually in possession of the Statesmen who worked their own land. The Statesmen have gone—economic changes vanquished them—but the houses they inherited from the men who bore pike and bow at Bannockburn and Flodden are for the most part standing yet. They have made no great mark in history, but their stout walls have time and again been engirdled by Scottish spears, and after such occasions there was not infrequently lamentation by Esk and Liddell. ”