sympathy for the people who had to live in the country was not encouraging, but he was so filled with the spell of it all himself that it seemed as though he must fire her with some of his enthusiasm.
At the crest of the hill the car stopped and he told her to look. There was nothing tangible to see but a deep expanse of level whiteness with a windbreak of black pines at the back, and one tall gnarl-limbed maple sheltering the remains of a ruined old house. She looked about blankly and asked:
“What is it?”
He smiled. “There’s isn’t much to see, yet,” he said, “but I’ve always wanted to show you this place. I think it could be made a little heaven and I want to buy it. I can just see what it would be like on a night like this with the light shining from the windows and the sparks from the fireplace shooting right up to the sky, and inside——”
“But it would cost an awful lot to fix it up and when you did get it done it would be so far from everywhere. But then you like to be away off from people and towns, don’t you?”
“It wouldn’t matter what I liked. A man can make his home anywhere; I suppose something of the savage in him likes to get out to the wild places. You think this is lonesome, then? It seems the beginning of an Eldorado to me. Listen
to the trees. On the stillest days you can hear those pines starting up with a low, cooing little shiver, growing louder and louder till you’d think there was a forest of them. It can be the sleepiest or the thrilliest sound in the world, I think.”
“To me they sound like someone crazy, crying. Let’s go.” She shivered, crept deeper into her furs and consulted her little French wrist-watch. “Do you know it’s getting late?” she finished a little wearily.
Then when the car had started she moved up closer—it was one of the trifling signs that always set him piling up the robes again, and scarcely above a whisper she confided:
“I’m sorry I don’t like your place. I remember, when I was very small, the little boy who played with me came one day to see my new play-house. It was the dream of my heart—up to that time—expressed in wood and paint and wonderful miniature furnishings, and I did so want him to like it. But he came and looked it over for a long time, frowning, with his hands in his pockets, just like a man. Then he said, ‘I don’t like it. It’s too sissy,’ and he walked right away. But when I cried, he came back and he said, ‘I don’t like your house, but that isn’t saying I don’t like you, and ‘cause you’re a girl, I guess maybe I like you better ’cause you like a house like that.’ ... You understand, don’t you, Billy?”