Thus I led him up the back steps and poured him a basin of hot water—which I brought myself from the kitchen, Harriet having marvelously and completely disappeared. We both washed our hands, talking with great good humor.
When we had finished I said: "Sit down, friend, if you've time, and let's talk."
So he sat down on one of the logs of my woodpile: a solid sort of man, rather warm after his recent activities. He looked me over with some interest and, I thought, friendliness.
"Why does a man like you," he asked finally, "waste himself on a little farm back here in the country?"
For a single instant I came nearer to being angry than I have been for a long time. Waste myself! So we are judged without knowledge. I had a sudden impulse to demolish him (if I could) with the nearest sarcasms I could lay hand to. He was so sure of himself! "Oh, well," I thought, with vainglorious superiority, "he doesn't know." So I said:
"What would you have me be—a millionaire?"
He smiled, but with a sort of sincerity.
"You might be," he said; "who can tell!"
I laughed outright; the humor of it struck me as delicious. Here I had been, ever since I first heard of John Starkweather, rather gloating over him as a poor suffering millionaire (of course millionaires are unhappy), and there he sat, ruddy of face and hearty of body, pitying me for a poor unfortunate farmer back here in the country! Curious, this human nature of ours, isn't it? But how infinitely beguiling!
So I sat down beside Mr. Starkweather on the log and crossed my legs. I felt as though I had set foot in a new country.