like a baby because she was missing so much! There was a chance, she
knew, all along this portion of the line, of seeing antelope and
coyotes, if only one kept one's eyes open; not to speak of the
gophers--enchanting little fellows, quite new to such travellers as
she--who seemed to choose the very railway line itself, by preference,
for their burrowings and their social gatherings. Then, as she saw, the
wheat country was nearly done; a great change was in progress; her
curiosity sprang to meet it. Droves of horses and cattle began to appear
at rare intervals on the vast expanse. No white, tree-sheltered farms
here, like the farms in Manitoba; but scattered at long distances, near
the railway or on the horizon, the first primitive dwellings of the new
settlers--the rude "shack" of the first year--beginnings of
villages--sketches of towns.

"I have always thought the Etruscan problem the most fascinating in the
whole world," cried Delaine, with pleasant enthusiasm. "When you
consider all its bearings, linguistic and historical--"

"Oh! _do_ you see," exclaimed Elizabeth, pointing--"_do_ you see all
those lines and posts, far out to the horizon? Do you know that all
these lonely farms are connected with each other and the railway by
_telephones_? Mr. Anderson told me so; that some farmers actually make
their fences into telephone lines, and that from that little hut over
there you can speak to Montreal when you please? And just before I left
London I was staying in a big country house, thirty miles from Hyde Park
Corner, and you couldn't telephone to London except by driving five
miles to the nearest town!"

"I wonder why that should strike you so much--the telephones, I mean?"