"Little rascal! Say, Helen, you ought to take him in hand and make him go to college. You're the only one who can manage him. He has the making of one of the biggest engineers in the country."
"Why don't you try your hand, Ralph? Mother says that you are his god yet. When he gets cornered, he insists that his way is just what Mr. Winston would do, and there he sticks. Father and mother both ask when you are coming back."
Winston shook his head almost regretfully. "I sometimes wish I had never left, but that's too late now. When I get a little despondent, the roar of the monitors eating into the gravel, the swish of the water and the clatter of boulders in the sluices get into my ears till I'm nearly wild."
"That is all over now. When I came away there were only a few discouraged miners digging in the banks and listening for the officers to come around and stop even that."
Winston went on even more regretfully.
"And I remember when you and I went barefoot, wading around with gold pans and scrapping as to which had the biggest pan—"
Helen rose to go. Her intuition told her that they were on dangerous ground.
"Old things and times are gone. We have put away childish things and gold pans, for something new."
Winston took her hand. A momentary pressure on her part and she withdrew it. She could not look into his eyes.
"Be careful about the new, Helen. There's fool's gold in these diggings too."