For himself, Brouillard had not been pointedly analytical as yet. From the moment when Amy and Smith had reined up at the door of his office shack and he had welcomed them both, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to fall under the spell of enchantment. He knew next to nothing of the young woman's life story; he had not cared to know. It had not occurred to him to wonder how the daughter of a man who drilled and shot the holes in his own mine should have the gifts and belongings—when she chose to display them—of a woman of a much wider world. It was enough for him that she was piquantly attractive in any character and that he found her marvellously stimulating and uplifting. On the days when the devil of moroseness and irritability possessed and maddened him he could climb to the cabin on high Chigringo and find sanity. It was a keen joy to be with her, and up to the present this had sufficed.
"Egoism is merely another name for the expression of a vital need," he said, after the divagating pause, defining the word more for his own satisfaction than in self-defense.
"You may put it in that way if you please," she returned gravely. "What is your need?"
He stated it concisely. "Money—a lot of it."
"How singular!" she laughed. "I need money, too—a lot of it."
"You?"
"Yes, I."
"What would you do with it? Buy corner lots in Niqoyastcàdjeburg?"
"No, indeed; I'd buy a farm in the Blue-grass—two of them, maybe."
"What an ambition for a girl! Have you ever been in the Blue-grass country?"