A Canadian Farm Mystery; Or, Pam the Pioneer
have your limitations. You are quite early Victorian in your ideas of what girls should or should not do. But you have got to widen your outlook a bit before Mother comes down from the drawing-room, because you must back me up in this. We can always influence Mother when we stand solid, and my great idea is for the general good.”

“For instance?” Jack had retrieved the fallen spoons, and was polishing vigorously. Pam had a good many great ideas of one sort and another, but he had a cautious streak, and was not going to back her up in any wild scheme just because she wanted him to do so.

“Grandfather told Mother to send one of us out to him, and he promised to pay a salary. He said one of the children, but he did not mention whether it was a boy or a girl that he would prefer.” Pam put out her facts with a calm decision, and Jack nodded approvingly. “Very well, you can’t go. It will be another month before you can walk without a stick, and when you can, there is your work at Gay & Grainger’s waiting for you, while until you go back they are paying you——”

“A mere pittance⁠—⁠half a crown a week, accident insurance!” he groaned. “If only I had been over sixteen I could have had the proper State Insurance. It is a rotten shame, and the grossest injustice!”

“Be quiet, and let me talk!” Pam lifted an impatient hand to stay the tide of his eloquence, sprinkling him with soapy water in the process. “You have this pittance, and work waiting for you, but I have nothing. You also are twice the help to Mother that I am. Don’t interrupt! Compliments are not necessary at this juncture; we are out for facts without trimmings, and don’t you forget it. Suppose that you had gone out to Grandfather this month. Mother says the winters in New Brunswick are dreadfully cold. Being a boy, you would naturally have had to work out of doors, and if there is no woman in the house, you would have had little comfort when you came in. Now, if I go, the dear little old man can hardly send me out into the forest chopping trees down when the temperature is miles below zero, but I can make him so comfortable in the house that by the spring he will be wanting the lot of us.”

“Query as to that.” Jack shook his head, and reached for the plate basket to put away his spoons.

“Oh, but he will. I shall lay myself out to win his heart; then when he has got so fond of me that he simply can’t bear me out of his sight, I shall turn home-sick. I shall refuse my food, and tell him that I am pining for my family, that I 
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