"A man like me," he remarked, "has first to learn how to make a living
before he can set about making money."
"Making money is relative. Quite often it merely means making a living
with an extended horizon," she observed. "I know a man with a
ten-thousand-dollar salary who finds it a living, no more."
"Poor devil," he drawled sardonically. "When I get into the
ten-thousand-a-year class I rather think it will afford me a few trifles
beyond bare subsistence."
She smiled.
"Have you set that for a mark to shoot at?"
"I haven't set any limit," he replied. "I haven't got my sights adjusted
yet."
"I can scarcely assure myself that you are really you," she said after a
momentary silence. "I can't seem to disassociate you with Lone Moose and
a blundering optimism, a mystical faith that the Lord would make things
come out right if you only leaned on Him hard enough. Now your talk is
flavored with both egotism and the bitterness of the cynic."
"How should a man talk?" he demanded. "Like a worm if he chance to be
trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he
realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for
egotism--Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when
you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I
chucked myself out of the church because of that--that abased,
disheartened feeling. For a year and a half I've been learning and
discovering that life isn't a parlor game. Do you remember that letter
you left with Cloudy Moon for me? I need only to recall a phrase here
and there in that as a cure for incipient egotism. What do you think I
should have become?" he flung at her, unconscious of the passion in his
voice, "A poor thing glad of a ride in your car? Or a confirmed optimist
in overalls?"
Sophie gave him a queer sidelong glance.
"Can't you let the dead past bury its dead?" she asked quietly.
Thompson kept his eyes on the smooth, green-bordered road for a minute.
The quick wave of feeling passed. He stifled it--indeed, felt ashamed
for letting it briefly master him.
"Of course," he answered at last, and turned to her with a friendly
quirk of his lips. "It is buried pretty deep one way and another, isn't
it? And it would hardly be decent to exhume the remains. Shall we talk
about the weather?"
"Don't be sarcastic," she reproved gently. "Save that to cope with dad.
He'll relish it coming from you."
"I don't know," Thompson said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't mind a chat with
your father. We wouldn't agree on many things, by a good way, although
I've discovered that some of his philosophy is sound enough. But I've
got to make a move, and I'm so situated that I must make it quickly or
not at all. I'm going to take the first north-bound steamer out of San
Francisco. So I don't imagine Mr. Carr will have a chance at me soon."