"Yes," he said, after a moment's cogitation, while he absently turned a cluster of beech-nuts in his hands, "I'll try it, for keeps, you may bet,—if you were a betting character. There's lots of good things going in these mountains; that is, if a fellow had the money to get 'em out."
He looked up a trifle drearily from under the brim of his straw hat at the smiling summertide of those blue mountains yonder. Oh, fair and feigning prospect, what wide and alluring perspectives! He drew a long sigh. Is it better to know so surely that winter is a-coming?
"An' the sense, too," remarked Narcissa, her eyes still dreamily dwelling on the distance.
He roused himself. The unconsciously flattering inference was too slight not to be lawfully appropriated.
"Yes, the sense and the enterprise. Now, these mountaineers,"—he spoke as if she had no part among them, forgetting it, indeed, for the moment,—"they let marble and silver and iron, and gold too, all sorts of natural wealth, millions and millions of the finest hard-wood timber, lie here undeveloped, without making the least effort to realize on it, without lifting a finger. They have got no enterprise in the world, and they are the most dilatory, slowest gang I ever ran across in my life."
A dimple deepened in the soft fairness of her cheek under the white sunbonnet.
"They got enterprise enough ter want a road," she drawled, fixing her eyes upon him for a moment, then reverting to her former outlook.
He was a trifle embarrassed, and lost his balance.
"Oh, I'll want a road, too, after a while," he returned. "All in good time." He laughed as if to himself, a touch of mystery in his tone, and he took off his hat and jauntily fanned himself.
"Sorter dil'tory yerse'f now; 'pears ter be a ketchin' complaint, like the measles."