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.
"What do you think of it?"
"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?"
Bob laughed.
"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.
"My dear, my dear!" she half whispered; "not here!"