"Is that the truth?"
"The real truth."
(It was not.)
"If it's egotistical to think absolutely nothing of yourself," continued Naomi, "and to blame yourself and not other people for every little thing that goes wrong, then I should call you a twenty-two-carat egotist. But even then your aims and ambitions would be rather lofty for the billet."
"They never seemed so to me," he whispered, "until you sympathized with them."
"Of course I sympathize," said Naomi, laughing at him. It was necessary to laugh at him now and then. It kept him on his feet; this time it led him from the abstract to the concrete.
"If only I could make enough money to go home and study, to study even in London for one year," murmured Engelhardt, as his eyes drifted out across the plains. "Then I should know whether my dreams ever were worth dreaming. But I have taken root out here, I am beginning to do well, better than ever I could have hoped. At our village in the old country I was glad enough to play the organ in church for twelve pounds a year. Down in Victoria they gave me fifty without a murmur, and I made a little more out of teaching. Oh! didn't I tell you I started life out here as an organist? That's how it was I was able to buy this business, and I am doing very well indeed. Two pounds for tuning a piano! They wouldn't credit it in the old country."
"The man before you used to charge three. A piano-tuner in the bush is an immensely welcome visitor, mind. I don't think I should have lowered my terms at all, especially when you have no intention of doing this sort of thing all your days."
"Ah, well, I shall never dare to throw it up."