“Is that all?”
“No. One of its commonest uses is to harden steel.”
She looked at him thoughtfully and made the peas pop faster and faster.
“I think, but I’m not quite sure, that you were willing to make love to me to get yourself a steel hardener.”
“Jean, you know better. I told you last night that you were harder than iron, but today you are hard enough to serve as a laboratory crucible to melt silica in. You have refused to marry me, and that’s all right. But you know I’m not trying to bribe you.”
She looked him in the eyes, and then, because she was as honest as he, she recanted.
“I beg your pardon. But one thing I’m sure of. You are willing to let them cut down the pines and blow all that beauty to smithereens. So if it comes to hardness, you are just as hard as I am. But there’s one thing you haven’t thought of at all.”
“What’s that, dearest?”
“Explosions.”
“Well, for a wonder, I did think of them. That’s why I tore up the will. I thought that if he would sell his farm for four thousand, I would buy it and give it to my employer for the quarrymen.”