Jim smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"You belong not to this country," Herr Gluck went on, "you belong to the old world where they build for their descendants."
Jim thoroughly enjoyed the long afternoon on the dam with the German. Herr Gluck's questions were searching and invigorating. They took Jim out of himself and he showed Herr Gluck a scientific knowledge and enthusiasm that few people were fitted to appreciate.
At five o'clock Jim took Herr Gluck up to his house and turned him over to Uncle Denny. The rotund, flaxen-haired German and the rotund, gray-haired Irishman took stock of each other. Uncle Denny moved two chairs before the open door.
Herr Gluck sat down. "Himmel! What beauty!" he exclaimed, as the faint lavender distances with the far mountains flashing sunset gold met his gaze. "Not strange that Mr. Manning has enthusiasm."
Uncle Denny sighed in a relieved way as if he had catalogued the newcomer.
"They say," said Dennis, "that a man must close his soul to the Big Country or else he will become great or go mad. And do you think me boy has done good work here, Herr Gluck?"
The German made some extraordinary rings of smoke and nodded his head slowly. "He has done some daring things well that may not be great in themselves, but they show imagination. That is the point. He has imagination. Many are the engineers who are accurate, who are trustworthy, but imagination, creative ability, no! You observe the shape of his head, his jaw, his hands—the dreamer, urged into action. And the impudence of his sand-cement idea! In my country we dare make our concrete only very rich. He shows me this afternoon that diluted rightly with sand, cement can be made stronger." Herr Gluck chuckled delightedly.
Uncle Denny almost purred. "He was so as a lad. He was captain of his school football teams because he could think of more wild tactics than all the rest of them put together. And always got away with them, looking sad and never an unnecessary word."