"Oh, you _are_
my kind of a woman after all! I was right about you."

Arnold showed by a lifted eyebrow that he was conscious of being
put down, but he survived the process with his usual negligent
obliviousness of reproof. "Well, if two thousand a year produced
Judith, go ahead, Page, and my blessing on you!" He added in a
half-apology for his offensive laughter, "It just tickled me to hear
a man who owns most of several counties of coal-mines so set up over
finding a nickel on the street!"

Page had regained his geniality. "Well, Smith, maybe I needn't have
jumped so when you stepped on my toe. But it's my pet toe, you see.
You're quite right--I'm everlastingly set up over my nickel. But it's
not because I found it. It's because I earned it. It happens to be the
only nickel I ever earned. It's natural I should want it treated with
respect."

Arnold did not trouble to make any sense out of this remark, and
Sylvia was thinking bitterly to herself: "But that's pure bluff! I'm
_not_ his kind of a woman. I'm Felix Morrison's kind!" No comment,
therefore, was made on the quaintness of the rich man's interest in
earning capacity.

They were now in one of the recent pine plantations, treading a
wood-road open to the sky, running between acres and acres of thrifty
young pines. Page's eyes glistened with affection as he looked at
them, and with the unwearied zest of the enthusiast he continued
expanding on his theme. Sylvia knew the main outline of her new
subject now, felt that she had walked all around it, and was agreeably
surprised at her sympathy with it. She continued with a genuine
curiosity to extract more details; and like any man who talks of a
process which he knows thoroughly, Page was wholly at the mercy of a
sympathetic listener. His tongue tripped itself in his readiness to
answer, to expound, to tell his experiences, to pour out a confidently
accurate and precise flood of information. Sylvia began to take a
playful interest in trying to find a weak place in his armor, to ask a
question he could not answer. But he knew all the answers. He knew the
relative weight per cubic foot of oak and pine and maple; he knew the
railroad rates per ton on carload lots; he knew why it is cheaper in
the long run to set transplants in sod-land instead of seeding it; he
knew what per cent to write off for damage done by the pine weevil, he
reveled in complicated statistics as to the actual cost per thousand
for chopping, ski