"I'll forgive you on condition you tell me what you'd write about if you were a poet."
"Why, people, of course. People are the only things that matter. I always skip the scenery. Everybody does, only they don't tell." She had lowered her voice, as if the very faded grasses and the sunburnt golden-rod might gossip of the heresy. "It's been rather hard on me that my father, who is so interesting and wonderful to talk to about everything else, should waste so much time on trees and things. I've thought more than once that some day, when he's in better health, I'll just tell him." She nodded portentously.
"H'm! How will you put it?"
"Oh, I should tell him just honestly the beauties of Nature make me sick."
A pause of satisfaction at finally unburdening her soul, and then a little start. She studied Ethan's face with some anxiety.
"I'm forgetting again that you— Do you mind if I don't care much about—" She made a vindictive gesture towards a small, wry-growing oak-tree clinging desperately to the side of the hill below them. "Do you mind?"
"I don't know that I do."
"Why should you? I don't mind that you hate my jacket—at least, not much. I tell you what, we'll make a compact. I'll never wear velvet or mullein leaves while you're here, and you will never mention the scenery."
"Very well; it's a bargain."
They shook hands. A sudden impulse made him loath to loosen his grasp. As he did so: