"Maybe the other life set him crazy, same as this is fixing you," he said, with perfect amiability.
The boy laughed incredulously. He flung himself into his mother's chair, and looked up at Murray's face above the stove.
"I don't believe that life could set folk crazy. There's too much to it," he laughed. He went on a moment later with a warmth of enthusiasm that must have been heart-breaking to those of greater experience. "Think of a city," he cried, almost ecstatically. "A big, live city. All lights at night, and all rushing in daylight. Men eager and striving in competition. Meeting, and doing, and living. Women, beautiful, and dressed like pictures, with never a thought but the joy of life, and the luxury of it all. And these folk without a smell of the dollars we possess. Folk without a difference from us. Think of the houses, the shows, the railroads. The street cars. The sleighs. The automobiles. The hotels. The dance halls. The—the—oh, gee, it makes me sick to think of all I've missed and you've seen. I can't—I just can't stand for it much longer."
Murray nodded.
"Guess I—understand." Then, in a moment, his eyes became serious, as though some feeling stirred them that prompted a warning he was powerless to withhold. "It's an elegant picture, the way you see it. But it's not the only picture. The other picture comes later in life, and if I tried to paint it for you I don't reckon you'd be able to see it—till later in life. Anyway, a man needs to make his own experience. Guess the world's all you see in it, sure. But there's a whole heap in it you don't see—now. Say, and those things you don't see are darn ugly. So ugly the time'll come you can't stand for 'em any more than you can stand for the dozy life around here now. Those folk you see in your dandy picture are wage slaves worshiping the gods of this darned wilderness just as we are right here. Just as are all the folks who come around this country, and I'd say there's many folks hating all the things you fancy, as bad as you hate the life you've been raised to right here. Still, I guess it's up to you."
"I'd give a heap to have mother think that way," Alec responded with a shade of moodiness.
"She does think that way."
The youngster sprang from his chair. His eyes were shining, and a joyous flush mounted to his handsome brow. There was no mistaking the reckless youth in him.
"She does? Then—say, it's you who've persuaded her. There hasn't been a day she hasn't tried to keep me right here, like—like some darn kid. She figgers it's up to me to choose what I'll do?" he cried incredulously.
Murray nodded. His eyes were studying the youth closely.