“Well, I had to go there, anyway, on business. But you can be sure that I checked on the story of their wood pulp supply pretty carefully. It isn’t too good. They do what they can. But Canada is so much larger and has so many more forests.”
Jean suddenly giggled. “I’m intrigued with the idea of your being a lumberjack.”
Ralph smiled. “I’ll be one; you’ll be one. The children will be chopping timber as soon as they learn to crawl!”
She shook her head. “You know, dear,” she said, “we all have to contribute to this life in the way we’re best equipped.”
Ralph nodded. “That’s true,” he agreed.
She smiled in spite of herself as she said, “I’ll be glad to buy myself a pair of spiked hightop boots and become a lumberjack, if you say so. But there is something else I can do better.”
“And that is?” he asked.
“I’m almost ashamed to tell you now,” Jean confessed, “because I’ll be consuming paper rather than making it.”
Ralph chuckled. “That’s what it’s made for. Now, tell me.”
Jean told him of the plans which Dr. Barsch had made for her. How she would take a correspondence course in art after they were married, and how, when she finished her course, she would contract to do sketches of operations at a nearby hospital for the medical publishers.