Read the text and answer the questions.

CHAPTER XV

BEAUTY IN DISGUISE

Winter passed very monotonously with us in the sod-house at Crane Valley. When the season's work is over and the prairie bound fast by iron frost, the man whom it has prospered spends his well-earned leisure visiting his neighbors or lounging contentedly beside the stove; but those oppressed by anxieties find the compulsory idleness irksome, and I counted the days until we could commence again in the spring. The goodwill of my neighbors made this possible, for one promised seed-wheat, to be paid for when harvest was gathered in; another placed surplus stock under my charge on an agreement to share the resultant profit, while Haldane sent a large draft of young horses and cattle he had hardly hands enough to care for, under a similar arrangement.

I accepted these offers the more readily because, while prompted by kindness, the advantages were tolerably equal to all concerned. So the future looked slightly brighter, and I hoped that better times would come, if we could hold out sufficiently long. The debt I still owed Lane, however, hung as a menace over me, while although--doubtless because it suited him--he did not press me for payment, the extortionate interest was adding to it constantly. Some of my neighbors were in similar circumstances, and at times we conferred together as to the best means of mutual protection.

In the meantime the fire at Gaspard's Trail was almost forgotten--or so, at least, it seemed. Haldane, much against his wishes, spent most of the winter at Bonaventure; but his elder daughter remained in Montreal. Boone, the photographer, appeared but once, and spent the night with us. He looked less like the average Englishman than ever, for frost and snow-blink had darkened his skin to an Indian's color, and when supper was over I watched him languidly as we lounged smoking about the stove. Sally Steel had managed to render the sod-house not only habitable but comfortable in a homely way, and though she ruled us all in a somewhat tyrannical fashion, she said it was for our good.

1. What is disguised?
2. What season goes by?
3. Did it go by thrillingly?
4. Where did they experience it?
5. Are there more seasonal tasks to do?
6. Is the land greed still?
7. What do people who are finished with work do?
8. What about the nervous
9. Who helped with this?
10. What did one offer?
11. What else was sent?
12. By whom?
13. Could he handle them?
14. Who does he owe money to?
15. Did it bother him?
16. Why?
17. Did anyone else owe him?
18. Who?
19. Where does someone stay?
20. Who?

Numbered answers:
1. unknown
2. Winter
3. no
4. the sod-house at Crane Valley
5. no
6. no
7. visit neighbors
8. they find the compulsory idleness irksome
9. neighbors
10. promised seed-wheat
11. a large draft of young horses and cattle
12. Haldane
13. no
14. Lane
15. yes
16. the extortionate interest was adding to it constantly.
17. yes
18. Some of the neighbors
19. Bonaventure
20. Haldane