His hand went to his hat band, after his first gaze at her, and he smiled.
"How-do-you-do?" he said, with friendly confidence.
Ann murmured a greeting.
"I didn't know anyone was on the road. I was thinking rather fiercely, I guess."
He started to walk beside her and Ann was glad, for he was of that type whose first appearance attracts by its promise of friendship.
"I've been thinking, too," she answered. "Thinking, among other things what a wonderful country this is. I'm from the East, I suppose it is not necessary to say, and this is my first look at your valley."
"Manzanita is a great old sweep of country!" he exclaimed, looking out over it. "That valley is a good thing to look at when we think that human anxieties are mighty matters."
He smiled, and Ann looked into his face with a new interest and said:
"I should think that such an influence as this is would tend to lessen those anxieties; that it would tend to make the people who live near it big, as it is big."
He looked away and shook his head slowly.