"How well you comprehend!" Jerry assured him. "But, seriously, the world is so different out here—the—the people and their ways and all."
"No, Jerry, it isn't that. The climate is different. The shapes of things differ. Instead of the churned-up ridged and rugged timber-decked lands of Pennsylvania and York State, the Creator of scenery chose to pour out this land mainly a smooth and level and treeless prairie—like chocolate on the top of a layer cake."
"Chocolate is good, with sand instead of sugar," Jerry interrupted.
"But as to the people—the real heart of the real folks of the Sage Brush—there's no difference. They all have 'eyes, hands, organs, senses, affections, passions.' They are all 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same means, warmed and cooled with the same summer and winter' as the cultured and uncultured folk of the Winnowoc Valley and the city of Philadelphia. The trouble with us is we don't take time to read them—nor even first of all to read ourselves. Of course I might except old Fishing Teddy, that fellow you see away down there where the shade is deepest," York added, to relieve the preachment he didn't want to seem to be giving, yet really wanted this girl to understand. "He's a hermit-crab and seldom comes among us. Every community has its characters, you know."
"He was among us last night, and went home with Joe Thomson," Jerry replied, looking with curious interest at the motionless brown figure up-stream in the shadow of a tall earth bank.
York gave a start and stared at the girl in surprise. "How do you know? Did the Big Dipper come calling on you? That sort of information is in the Great Bear's line."
Jerry flushed hotly as she remembered her promise not to tell of Mrs. Bahrr's call. In a dim sort of way she felt herself entangled for the moment. Then she looked full at York, with deep, honest eyes, saying, simply:
"Joe Thomson was calling on me last night, and I saw this old fellow, Hans Theodore, Joe named him, waiting on the driveway, and the two went away together, a pair of aces."
"How do you know, fair lady, that this is the same creature? And how do you happen to know Joe Thomson?" York inquired, blandly, veiling his curious interest with indifference.
"I happened to meet both of these country gentlemen on a certain day. In fact, I dined al fresco with one when I was riding in my chariot, incognito, alone, unattended by gallant outriders, about my blank blank rural estate in the heart of the Sage Brush country of Kansas. The 'blank blank' stands for a term not profane at all, but one I never want to hear again—that awful word 'blowout.'"