As she looked over the broad whiteness of the farmlands, above which the sunset clouds were now tossing in climbing lines of crimson and gold, rising steeply to a zenith of splendour, and opening here and there, amid their tumult, to show a further heaven of untroubled blue—­Elizabeth thought with lamentation that their days on the farm were almost done.  The following week could see them at Ottawa for the opening of the session.  Anderson was full of Parliamentary projects; important work for the Province had been entrusted to him; and in the general labour policy of the Dominion he would find himself driven to take a prominent part.  But all the while his heart and Elizabeth’s were in the land and its problems; for them the true, the entrancing Canada was in the wilds.  And for Anderson, who through so many years, as an explorer and engineer, had met Nature face to face, his will against hers, in a direct and simple conflict, the tedious and tortuous methods of modern politics were not easy to learn.  He must indeed learn them—­he was learning them; and the future had probably great things in store for him, as a politician.  But he came back to the Saskatchewan farm with joy, and he would leave it reluctantly.

“If only I wasn’t so rich!” thought Elizabeth, with compunction.  For she often looked with envy on her neighbours who had gone through the real hardships of the country; who had bought their Canadian citizenship with the toil and frugality of years.  It seemed to her sometimes that she was step-child rather than daughter of the dear new land, in spite of her yearning towards it.

And yet money had brought its own romance.  It had enabled Anderson to embark on this ample farm of nearly two square miles, to staff it with the best labour to be got, on a basis of copartnership, to bring herds of magnificent cattle into these park-like prairies, to set up horse-breeding, and to establish on the borders of the farm a large creamery which was already proving an attraction for settlers.  It was going to put into Elizabeth’s hands the power of helping the young University of Strathcona just across the Albertan border, and perhaps of founding in their own provincial capital of Regina a training college for farm-students—­girls and boys—­which might reproduce for the West the college of St. Anne’s, that wonderful home of all the useful arts, which an ever-generous wealth has given to the Province of Quebec.  Already she had in her mind a cottage hospital—­sorely wanted—­for the little town of Donaldminster, wherein the weaklings of this great emigrant army now pouring into the country might find help.

Her heart, indeed, was full of schemes for help.  Here she was, a woman of high education, and much wealth, in the midst of this nascent community.  Her thoughts pondered the life of these scattered farms—­of the hard-working women in them—­the lively rosy-cheeked children.  It was her ambition so to live among them that they might love her—­trust her—­use her.