"Well, the world is here to be conquered," said Phil. "What peak have you picked to plant your flag on?" "Oh, I want money first--you've got to have it these days to do things with; and then I think I'd like power. I'd go in for politics--the governor's chair or the senate. If father hadn't died he could have got the governorship easy; he was entitled to it and it would have come along just in the course of things. What would you like to do best of all?" "If I told you, you wouldn't believe it. I don't want a thing I haven't got--not a single thing. On a day like this everything is mine--that long piece of woods over there--black against the blue sky--and the creek underfoot--I couldn't ask for a single other thing!" "But there must be a goal you want to reach--everybody has that." "Oh, you're talking about to-morrow! and this is to-day. And sufficient unto the day is the joy thereof. If I ever told anybody what I mean to do to-morrow, it would be spoiled. I'm full of dark secrets that I never tell any one." "But you might tell me--I'm the best possible person to tell secrets to." "I can't be sure of that, when I hardly know you at all." "That's mighty cruel, you know, when I feel as though I had known you always." He tried to throw feeling into this, but the time and place and her vigorous strides over the ice did not encourage sentiment. "You oughtn't to tell girls that you feel you have known them always. It isn't complimentary. You ought to express sorrow that they are so difficult to know and play the card that you hope by great humility and perseverance one day to know them. That is the line I should take if I were a man." He laughed at this. There were undoubted fastnesses in her nature that were not easily attainable. She seemed to him amazingly mature in certain ways, and in others she was astonishingly childlike. "They say you're a genius; that you're going to do wonderful things," he said. "Who says it?" asked Phil practically, but not without interest. "Oh, my aunt says it; she says other people say it." "Well, my aunts haven't said it," remarked Phil. "According to them my only genius is for doing the wrong thing." "We needn't any of us expect to be appreciated in our own families. That's always the way. You read a lot, don't you?" "I like to read; but you can read a lot without being a genius. Geniuses don't have to read--they know it all without reading. So there's that." "I'll wager you write, too;--confess now that you do!" "Letters to my father when he's away from home--one every night. But he isn't away very much." "But stories and things like that. Yes; don't deny it: you mean to be a writer! I'm sure you can succeed at that. Lots of women do; some of the best writers are women. You will write novels like--like--George Eliot." Phil laughed her derision of the idea.