“I don’t know whether to thank you or not,” answered Marion.
“Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very solicitous about Huntington’s health.”
He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some of her pent-up laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to be a treat! She studied him stealthily while he chattered on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish hue; his head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow; and the contour of that head, with its polished dome, and the narrow face tapering down to the pointed beard, was comically suggestive of a carrot. But it was an intelligent, even intellectual countenance, and his blue 55 eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at, but he could not be flouted, she thought.
“Then you’ve been here before, Mr. –––” she began, and hesitated.
“Smythe,” he prompted her generously. “J. Hamerton Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e. I didn’t change it from Smith, and I don’t know what one of my esteemed ancestors did. But I’m glad he did. It gives me a touch of artificiality, don’t you think? I fear being too natural.”
Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the way to chairs near an open window where a black and yellow butterfly hovered over a honeysuckle blossom that had nodded its friendly way into the room.
“I’m from New York too,” Smythe rattled on. “Columbia. Doing a little tutoring and a little postgraduate work. This is my third summer in the Park. Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was tired of the old places––Maine and Adirondacks and the rest. Looked at a map in a railroad office, and there it was, sticking right out at me, the first name I lighted on. In small type too––curious, wasn’t it? Clerks in office hadn’t heard of it, but I started out to find it. Thought I’d better get to Paradise when I could. And now I’m glad. I feel like an old settler, and I believe the cow-punchers have ceased to regard me as a tenderfoot. That’s as flattering as a Ph.D.”
“I’m afraid they laugh at me,” said Marion.
“On the contrary. Believe me, these cowboys have taken to reading poetry since you came.”
“Please be natural, Mr. Smythe!”