"No? You've tried to buy his timber holdings, haven't you? I heard you confess irritably that you couldn't see why he would neither log it off nor sell. Perhaps it never occurred to you that he is doing precisely what we've done--on a smaller scale--acquire a natural source of wealth and hold it, benefiting by the sure increase in value. He has seventy thousand dollars' worth of timber there. He makes it produce a reasonable living. When he lets it go, he will have a moderate competence. He has managed to give his daughter a university education. If he hasn't luxury, he has something he values more--independence. That rather argues character, doesn't it?" "The argument is yours, Rod. Special pleading. You'd have made an excellent advocate. But suppose the worst. Suppose you find you can't mix oil and water--you know what I mean--what then?" "Well, then I won't be the first younger son of this house to break away, to go on his own and make the best of things as he finds them. Will I?" Rod asked. "I'd be sorry to see you do that. It's so unnecessary. There's room and plenty for all of us here. Of course, if you should elect to do that, you have your inalienable income from the estate. But I'd much prefer to see you and Phil together carrying on the upcoast end of our affairs. I don't want to see my boys scattered. I may have a selfish interest in keeping the family together. I should find myself very lonely here with all my children gone." "And you're afraid I'll ball things up by marrying a girl nobody knows, and to whom people may not take kindly, eh?" "That's about it, my son." "Well, it's coming off on schedule, you may be sure of that," Rod said tartly. "I think I love Hawk's Nest as dearly as any of us. I have a pretty keen sense of what's due the family. I am perhaps a little proud of belonging to it. I'd a little rather be a great-great-grandson of that adventurous old fur trader than anything I know. But I have only one life to live, and I propose to live it according to my lights. I am not going to do anything that will reflect on us. I merely intend to marry a poor man's daughter because she seems to me the most perfect woman I know." "You are quite determined?" his father asked again. Rod answered him with a simple "Yes." "At any rate there is no need for such haste, is there?" Norquay senior continued, with a hint of petulance. "Next month is absurd. Give us a chance to meet your _fiancée_, to get acquainted with her. If she is to become one of the family, let's have a show at making her feel that she'll be welcome. Incidentally, it will give you time to think. A month's engagement is positively indecent."