“But, Joshua, don’t they have enormous telescopes at the universities?”
“Yes, they do,” he conceded. “But right here I’ll tell you something that you perhaps don’t know. There are difficulties that arise when an astronomer attempts lunar or Martian observations with high-powered telescopes that the layman knows nothing about. This is too involved for me to attempt an explanation, but believe me when I say that moderate magnifying power, under certain conditions, has its advantages in the study of Mars and the moon. Why, some of our greatest discoveries have been made with small instruments. It’s the transparency of the atmosphere, the ability of the observer to concentrate and his constant application, coupled with good vision, that get results. Oh, on that mountain over there—if I’m right—and I know I am—”
The older woman was smiling at his enthusiasm and sincerity, and she saw in him now just what she had expected of the queer little boy who had come courting her daughter at breakfast time, and revealed to her the wonders of the stars that night. Joshua’s handsome, ascetic face was aglow with the warmth of his feelings, and his tolerant, gray-blue eyes mirrored the intensity of his thoughts. “What a lover he’d make,” she mused, but aloud she said:
“You’re only about twenty-one, aren’t you? But you talk and act like a man of thirty. Are you all for astronomy? Haven’t you any of the yearnings that most young men have?”
“Well,” he replied thoughtfully, “there was no use to yearn in the House of Refuge, and I guess I got out of the habit of it early. But I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy—honest”—and his eyes twinkled. “I suppose I am a bit cramped mentally. I don’t know what I would be like if I hadn’t been a tramp for a year or more. That took a lot of the Ethelbert stuff out of me, I guess, and put what he-man there is into me. Now don’t think I’m a freak. Because a man’s a scientist he doesn’t have to have stooped shoulders and be absent-minded and wear glasses as big as check-strap rings. I’m human and sinful, head over heels in love with life, and like to play draw poker. And if The Whimperer did steal my refractor and almost break my heart, he taught me to smoke tobacco and drink a glass of hundred-proof without batting an eye—for the appreciation of which good things of earth I thank him. Just the same, I’m a born astronomer. I’m not meaning to be boastful—I merely was fortunate enough, by a rare fluke, to find out early in life what I was put here for. And I’m just telling you. I know I’m boring you, Mrs. Mundy.”
Madge did not give her mother time to say yes or no. “But you haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Is there any money in it, Joshua?”
“I’ve hardly considered that,” he told her. “I don’t want to consider it. But I may gain fame. For about a year before I left the House of Refuge I was working on a pet theory of my own. It’s in connection with Mars, which planet had occupied my interest almost exclusively for some time before Mr. Clegg died. If I can prove my theory to be fact— Well, then I’ll make ’em sit up and take notice. And as for money, why, I can earn all I’ll need right here in the mountains, I guess. All I want is a living and a horse to carry me over the mountains and the desert, a little cabin back from the lake in a clump of sprawling junipers that I know about—and a five-inch telescope on my hill.”
Madge laughed shortly. “That sounds romantic enough,” she admitted, “but— Oh, well, come take a ride with me and I’ll show you what an eighteen-year-old shanty queen can do. And I warn you right now that I’m mighty proud of myself, and you must conduct yourself accordingly. I may never achieve fame, but if we’re reasonably fortunate we’ll get the money. That’s what counts these days.”
“You don’t mean that at all,” he said hopefully, for the first time a little disappointed with his Penelope in bronze.
“Humph! Don’t I? ’By, Ma”—and she led the way out into the cool sunshine and fresh forest smells.