She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving off with beds unmade to prepare the evening meal. Dan, home from the mill and newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for supper, would turn sullen then, and leave the moment the meal was over.
"Hell of a way to live," he said once. "I'd get married, but how can a fellow know whether a girl will make a home for him or give him this? And then there would be babies, too."
The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial. Willy Cameron found their bickering understandable enough, but he was puzzled, sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching his sister. Edith was conscious of it, too, and one evening she broke into irritated speech.
"I wish you'd quit staring at me, Dan Boyd."
"I was wondering what has come over you," said Dan, ungraciously. "You used to be a nice kid. Now you're an angel one minute and a devil the next."
Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.
"I wouldn't worry her, Dan," he said; "it is the spring, probably. It gets into people, you know. I'm that way myself. I'd give a lot to be in the country just now."
Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind, he said nothing just then. However, later on he volunteered: "She's got something on her mind. I know her. But I won't have her talking back to mother."
A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the bell of the Boyd house, and then, after his amiable custom, walked in.
"Oh, Cameron!" he bawled.
"Upstairs," came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with carpet tacks. So Mr. Hendricks climbed part of the way, when he found his head on a level with that of the young gentleman he sought, who was nailing a rent in the carpet.
"Don't stop," said Mr. Hendricks. "Merely friendly call. And for heaven's sake don't swallow a tack, son. I'm going to need you."
"Whaffor?" inquired Willy Cameron, through his nose.
"Don't know yet. Make speeches, probably. If Howard Cardew, or any Cardew, thinks he's going to be mayor of this town, he's got to think again."
"I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as he gives it honest government."