“You dig for it, idiot,” said Dirk, stooping, and taking from his basket the queerly curved sharp knife or spud used for cutting the asparagus shoots. “Cut the shoots three or four inches below the surface.” “Oh, let me do it!” She was down on her silken knees in the dirt, ruined a goodly patch of the fine tender shoots, gave it up and sat watching Dirk’s expert manipulation of the knife. “Let’s have radishes, and corn, and tomatoes and lettuce and peas and artichokes and——” “Artichokes grow in California, not Illinois.” He was more than usually uncommunicative, and noticeably moody. Paula remarked it. “Why the Othello brow?” “You didn’t mean that rot, did you? about marrying a rich man.” “Of course I meant it. What other sort of man do you think I ought to marry?” He looked at her, silently. She smiled. “Yes, wouldn’t I make an ideal bride for a farmer!” “I’m not a farmer.” “Well, architect then. Your job as draughtsman at Hollis & Sprague’s must pay you all of twenty-five a week.” “Thirty-five,” said Dirk, grimly. “What’s that got to do with it!” “Not a thing, darling.” She stuck out one foot. “These slippers cost thirty.” “I won’t be getting thirty-five a week all my life. You’ve got brains enough to know that. Eugene wouldn’t be getting that much if he weren’t the son of his father.” “The grandson of his grandfather,” Paula corrected him. “And I’m not so sure he wouldn’t. Gene’s a born mechanic if they’d just let him work at it. He’s crazy about engines and all that junk. But no—‘Millionaire Packer’s Son Learns Business from Bottom Rung of Ladder.’ Picture of Gene in workman’s overalls and cap in the Sunday papers. He drives to the office on Michigan at ten and leaves at four and he doesn’t know a steer from a cow when he sees it.” “I don’t care a damn about Gene. I’m talking about you. You were joking, weren’t you?” “I wasn’t. I’d hate being poor, or even just moderately rich. I’m used to money—loads of it. I’m twenty-four. And I’m looking around.” He kicked an innocent beet-top with his boot. “You like me better than any man you know.” “Of course I do. Just my luck.” “Well, then!” “Well, then, let’s take these weggibles in and have ’em cooked in cream, as ordered.” She made a pretense of lifting the heavy basket. Dirk snatched it roughly out of her hand so that she gave a little cry and looked ruefully down at the red mark on her palm. He caught her by the shoulder—even shook her a little. “Look here, Paula. Do you mean to tell me you’d marry a man simply because he happened to have a lot of money!” “Perhaps not simply because he had a lot of money. But it certainly would be a factor, among other things. Certainly he would be preferable to a man who knocked me about the fields as if I were a bag of potatoes.” “Oh, forgive me. But—listen, Paula—you know I’m—gosh!—— And there I am stuck in an architect’s office and it’ll be years before I——”