"Well--" Her eyes sparkled, and then she pursed her mouth as one determined not to let out secrets before the fulness of time. "Yes?" "I hadn't noticed the smoke in the valley, or the mud in the river, and _certainly_ wasn't thinking about the scenery at all. I never do." "What's your objection to scenery?" "So horrid dull. Not just this--_all_ scenery." "You think so?" "Oh, dreadful! And it's just the same with birds and trees, and all the things the poets make such a time about. _I_ can't be bothered." "Really!" Ethan was laughing at her harassed, overdone look. "Oh, do forgive me! I quite forgot you were a poet, too." "I'll forgive you on condition you tell me what you'd write about if _you_ were a poet." "Why, people, of course. People are the only things that matter. I _always_ skip the scenery. Everybody does, only they don't tell." She had lowered her voice, as if the very faded grasses and the sunburnt golden-rod might gossip of the heresy. "It's been rather hard on me that my father, who is so interesting and wonderful to talk to about everything else, should waste so much time on trees and things. I've thought more than once that some day, when he's in better health, I'll just tell him." She nodded portentously. "H'm! How will you put it?" "Oh, I should tell him just honestly the beauties of Nature make me sick." A pause of satisfaction at finally unburdening her soul, and then a little start. She studied Ethan's face with some anxiety. "I'm forgetting again that you-- Do you mind if I don't care much about--" She made a vindictive gesture towards a small, wry-growing oak-tree clinging desperately to the side of the hill below them. "Do you mind?" "I don't know that I do." "Why should you? I don't mind that you hate my jacket--at least, not much. I tell you what, we'll make a compact. I'll never wear velvet or mullein leaves while you're here, and you will never mention the scenery." "Very well; it's a bargain." They shook hands. A sudden impulse made him loath to loosen his grasp. As he did so: "Now tell me," he said, "what _were_ you looking at with such a rapture of expectation. What interests you in that dirty little town?" "It's only dirty because it's so enterprising," she said, apologetically. "You can't stop to trouble about your looks if you've got a lot to do." "Quite true, America. But still, what is there besides enterprise in that dirty little town that makes you--" "_Little!_ Why, my father says there are 35,000 inhabitants." "Ah, there's safety in numbers. I fancied from your expression you had forgotten 34,999 of them." "There's the carriage," said Val, not looking in his face. "How long is he going to stay, grandma?" asked Emmie, as the two figures came towards them. "I don't know, my dear." "I think he means to be here a long while." "What makes you think so?"