She scribbled it on the top of her pad and later amazed the cook by ordering five hundred and eighty-six thousand pounds of roast.
“It’s a surprising fact, isn’t it?” he exclaimed.
It certainly had surprised her if that is what he meant.
“I didn’t know Alaska was so large,” she admitted.
“Nor I. But it is. You can see it here on the map.”
He hurried back to the map and standing over it pointed melodramatically in such a way that one could not help but examine unless one wished to appear rude.
“It goes from here to here and here to here,” he explained as she came nearer. “It was bought from Russia for seven million, two hundred dollars. The deal proved that the nation had become essentially Yankee. I think some of my ancestors must have been mixed up in it.”
“Your father is a business man?”
“The apotheosis of a business man. He reckons his age in fiscal years. Business to his life is what the cook-stove is to the kitchen; it warms and feeds him. Take it away and the world would contain nothing but useless pots and kettles and a few raw materials. The only concession he makes to Art is to put a scroll upon the cook-stove door. It was from that scroll that I received my own humble inclination towards Art.”
“I’m afraid your father would think you wasting your time here,” she said anxiously.