"I didn't say that."

"You as much as said it. Spoof may have advantages--I admit his travel, and all that--but will those things keep him big? Won't section Two bound him in a year or so, just as you say Fourteen bounds me now? Is he different clay; less ox, more soul?"

"Section Two can never hold Spoof, because he--because he is _big_, don't you see? He reads, he thinks, he sings, he dreams. No section can hold one who does those things."

"Does he write poetry?" I inquired, innocently.

"I--I don't think so," said she, not scenting my trap, "but he is very fond of it. You should hear him read----"

"Hear him read 'Come to me. . . . . Spoof!'"

She turned to me fairly again. She had withdrawn her hands from mine and was crushing little crusts of snow between her mittens. Now she dropped the snow, shook her hands free of its powdery residue, then linked them about her knee. For a long moment she held me under her eyes without blinking.

"So you saw that, did you?"

"Jean--I'm sorry. I apologize. I saw it by accident--I couldn't help that. I could have helped speaking about it. I apologize."

Then her eyes dropped. "It was very foolish," she murmured. "You have a right to be amused."

"But I'm not amused," I protested. "And I'm not sure it is really foolish. At any rate, I'll confess something, Jean; when I found it I tried to write a poem--to you--but I couldn't. The only rhymes I could think of were Jean and bean."

"Splendid! Oh. Frank, I'm beginning to be afraid--to hope--that I didn't quite know you after all. Fancy you trying to write poetry--and about me! Let's write a verse now. I'll help you."

She whipped a mitten from her hand and sat with her fingers lightly drumming on her lips, summoning the muse.

"You'll have to write it," I said. "I'll sign it."

"All right!" she exclaimed at length, and turning to the huge drift behind us she traced on its hard surface with her forefinger this inscription:

If you will only be my wife, No matter what the past has been I'll take a broader view of life And try to keep you guessing, Jean.

"Oh, you used my rhymes!" I exclaimed. "But isn't that last line slangy?" I said, when we had it well laughed over and I had added at the side an idealistic sketch of Jean's face under a bridal veil. My drawing rather lost its point in the fact that I had to explain what it was.

"No, not slang--poetic license. That's a great advantage poets have; anything that isn't quite good English can always be called poetic license. Now sign it."

I signed it in bold, printed letters, and then we fell into silence.

"What's the answer, Jean?" I said at length.

"Oh, Frank, I can't give you an answer--not now. That may have been slang, about keeping me guessing, but it goes a long way down in one's nature. If you would only read, and study, and think, and learn to appreciate beautiful things--"

"Oh, Jean, I do! I appreciate you."

"Rather clever, Frank, but that isn't just what I mean. I mean like Spoof; we might as well be frank about it. I've seen him watch the sunset in the pond; watch the colors change and blend and run in little ripples with a touch of breeze as though the water had been stirred with a feather; I've seen him sit for hours watching the ambers and saffrons and champagnes of the prairie sunset, and----"

"And that's why he got so little plowing done."

"Stop it! And he knows every flower on the prairies, and all you know is pigweed and----"

"And tiger lilies."

"Stop it again! And he takes note of little things, like when I worked a new strip of lace into the yoke of my dress, and when I put a dash of scarlet ribbon in my hat he said it gave me just the touch of color that one needed on the prairies, and it was no wonder that the Red Indians loved color, and how much wiser, in some things, they were than we, and----"

"He was spoofing you, Jean."

"He wasn't."

"Then he was making love to you."

"Perhaps. But it was very nice. You never noticed my lace or my ribbon.

You didn't even notice this new cap I have on to-day; I made it out of an old m.u.f.f, all myself, and I just said to myself, 'I wonder if Frank will notice it,' but you didn't----"

"I did, too. I saw it first thing, and I thought how nice it looked on you."

"Spoof would have said how nice I looked under it."

"Oh, d.a.m.n Spoof!"

"Spoof's an artist, Frank. You're not."

"Nor yet a poet. But I reckon I'll make a good farmer."

"We threshed out the ox question a while ago. Let's keep on new ground."

"Very well. Here's some new ground. When did Spoof tell you all these things? I understood he hadn't come into the house all the time we were away."

"He didn't either--hardly. But he used to come over regularly to see that everything was all right about the place and to have his 'bawth', and he had the handsomest bathing suit--white and yellow tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--and Marjorie and I fixed up bathing suits too, and we used to go in----"

"Together?"

"Of course. Only Marjorie only went in once or twice; she said she was afraid of the frogs. . . . . Marjorie is a knowing girl."

"My own sister! And she would conspire . . . . . ." I crunched a clump of crust viciously under my heel.

"Well, seeing that you have confessed, I suppose I should own up, too,"

I said, after a silence. "I never told you that there was a girl out where I worked this summer."

"No? What was she like?" Jean's voice was steady, but I caught a new note in it. It augured well for my first attempt at romancing.

"Oh, she was a nice girl, all right. Her folks thought she would make a good ox, but she didn't quite fall in line. She had that broader vision you set so much on. Sort o' hinted that she and I might do well running a rooming house at Moose Jaw; they say things are humming at the Jaw.

Rather suggested----"

"Oh, Frank, she never did! . . . . . Wanted you to marry her, I suppose?"

"No, she didn't just say that. But she's BIG, you know; takes a big view of things. Of course, it might have come to that in time. I remember one afternoon it rained and we couldn't work in the fields and that night she and I went to a dance----"

"Does she dance well?"