Bob's obvious course was to talk the whole matter over with his superior officer, and that is exactly what he intended to do. Instead, he hunted up Amy. He justified this course by the rather sophistical reflection that in her he would encounter the most positive force to the contrary of the proposition he had just received. Amy stood first, last and all the time for the Service; her heart was wholly in its cause. In her opinion he would gain the advantage of a direct antithesis to the ideas propounded by his father. This appeared to Bob an eminently just arrangement, but failed to account for a certain rather breathless excitement as he caught sight of Amy's sleek head bending over a pan of peas.
“Amy,” said he, dropping down at her feet, “I want your advice.”
She let fall her hands and looked at him with the refreshing directness peculiarly her own.
“Father wants me to take charge of the Wolverine Company's operations,” he began.
“Well?” she urged him after a pause.
“I thought you had worked that all out for yourself some time ago.”
“I had. But father and Mr. Welton are getting a little too old to handle such a proposition, and they are looking to me—” he paused.
“That situation is no different than it has been,” she suggested. “What else?”
“You see through me very easily, don't you? Well, the situation is changed. I'm being bribed.”
“Bribed!” Amy cried, throwing her head back.
“Extra inducements offered. They make it hard for me to refuse, without seeming positively brutal. They offer me complete charge—to do as I want. I can run the works absolutely according to my own ideas. Don't you see how I am going to hurt them when I refuse under such circumstances?”
“Refuse!” cried Amy. “Refuse! What do you mean!”
“Do you think I ought to leave the Service?” stammered Bob blankly.
“Why, it's the best chance the Service has ever had!” said Amy, the words fairly tumbling over one another. “You must never dream of refusing. It's your chance—it's our chance. It's the one thing we've lacked, the opportunity of showing lumbermen everywhere that the thing can be made to pay. It's the one thing we've lacked. Oh, what a chance!”
“But—but,” objected Bob—“it means giving up the Service—after these years—and all the wide interests—and the work——”
“You must take it,” she swept him away, “and you must do it with all your power and all the ability that is in you. You must devote yourself to one idea—make money, make it pay!”
“This from you,” said Bob sadly.
“Oh, I am so glad!” cried Amy. “Your father is a dear! it's the one fear that has haunted me—lest some visionary incompetent should attempt it, and should fail dismally, and all the great world of business should visit our methods with the scorn due only his incompetence. It was our great danger! And now it is no longer a danger! You can do it, Bob; you have the knowledge and the ability and the energy—and you must have the enthusiasm. Can't you see it? You must!“
She leaned over, her eyes shining with the excitement of her thought, to shake him by both shoulders. The pan of peas promptly deluged him. They both laughed.
“I'd never looked at it that way,” Bob confessed.
“It's the only way to look at it.”
“Why!” cried Bob, in the sudden illumination of a new idea. “The more money I make, the more good I'll do—that's a brand new idea for you!”
He rose to his feet, slowly, and stood for a moment lost in thought. Then he looked down at her, a fresh admiration shining in his eyes.
“Yours is the inspiration and the insight—as always,” he said humbly. “It has always been so. I have seemed to myself to have blundered and stumbled, groping for a way; and you have flown, swift as a shining arrow, straight to the mark.”
“No, no, no, no!” she disclaimed, coming close to him in the vigour of her denial. “You are unfair.”
She looked up into his face, and somehow in the earnestness of her disclaimer, the feminine soul of her rose to her eyes, so that again Bob saw the tender, appealing helplessness, and once more there arose to full tide in his breast the answering tenderness that would care for her and guard her from the rough jostling of the world. The warmth of her young body tingled in recollection along his arm, and then, strangely enough, without any other direct cause whatever, the tide rose higher to flood his soul. He drew her to him, crushing her to his breast. For an instant she yielded to him utterly; then drew away in a panic.
