The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922)

'Eddie, I insist that you tell me what you two are talking about,' demanded Nora hotly.

'My dear,' said her brother, 'these pretty little flowers which you've picked to make your shack look bright and--and homelike, may mean ruin.'

'Eddie!'

'You must have heard--why, I remember telling you about it myself--about this mustard, this weed. We farmers in Canada have three enemies to fight: frost, hail and weed.'

Mrs. Sharp confirmed his words with a despairing nod of her head.

'We was hailed out last year,' she said. 'Lost our whole crop. Never got a dollar for it. And now! If we lose it this year, too--why, we might just as well quit and be done with it.'

'When it gets into your crop,' Marsh explain for Nora's benefit, 'you've got to report it. If you don't, one of the neighbors is sure to. And then they send an inspector along, and if he condemns it, why you just have to destroy the whole crop, and all your year's work goes for nothing. You're lucky, in that case, if you've got a bit of money laid by in the bank and can go on till next year when the next crop comes along.'

'We've only got a quarter-section and we've got five children. It's not much money you can save then.'

'But----' began Nora.

'Are they out with the inspector now?' asked Marsh.

'Yes. He came out from Prentice this morning early.'

'This will be a bad job for Frank.'

'Yes, but he hasn't got the mouths to feed that we have. I can't think what's to become of us. He can hire out again.'

Nora's face flushed.

'I--I wonder why he hasn't told me anything about it. I asked him, only this morning, what was troubling him. I was sure there was something, but he said not,' she said sadly.

'Oh, I guess he's always been in the habit of keeping his troubles to himself, and you haven't taught him different yet.'

Nora was about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the unobservant Eddie noted with approval.

'Well,' he said as cheerfully as he could, 'you must hope for the best, Mrs. Sharp.'

'Sid says we've only got it in one place. But perhaps he's only saying it, so as I shouldn't worry. But you know what them inspectors are; they don't lose nothin' by it. It don't matter to them if you starve all winter!'

Suddenly she began to cry. Great sobs wracked her heavy frame. The big tears rolled down her cheeks. Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hardships she had endured, or of the little one she had lost. She was greatly moved, for this good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.

'Oh, don't--don't cry, dear Mrs. Sharp. After all, it may all turn out right.'

'They won't condemn the whole crop unless it's very bad, you know,' Marsh reminded her. 'Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company.'

Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking. She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.

'What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the weed!' She had to stop again for a moment. 'I can't bear any more. If we lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do from the beginning. But Sid--Sid always had his heart set on farming.'