"Sure, you're heart-broken over the pathos of it. I can see that. You ought to put in about a week here—that's all I've got to say."
"Think I couldn't?" She looked across at him queerly.
"You wouldn't dare go any farther away than the spring. You'd have to stay right here on this peak every minute of the twenty-four hours. They call up at all kinds of ungodly times, just to see if you're on the job, if they think you're snitching. They'd catch you gone sometime—you couldn't get by with it—and then—"
"The can," finished Miss Marion gravely. "But what I want to know is, what have you done?"
"Done?" Jack's jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem. "What yuh mean, done?"
"Yes. What have you done that they should put you up here and make you stay up here? It sounds—"
"Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout station, and that I'm here to watch out for fires down below! I'm your guardian angel, young lady. Treat me with respect, if not with kindness."
"I'm a member of the no-treat reform club. Honestly, don't they let you leave here at all?"
"Four days a month." He heaved a heavy sigh and waved his pipe toward the great outdoors. "'S big world, when it's all spread out in sight," he volunteered.
"Can't you—can't you even go down to the lake and fish, when you want to?"