"Well, America, what do you think of the prospect?" said his voice behind her.
"Much more than I'm going to tell you, to be laughed at for my pains."
"Oh, well, I can see it for myself--a smoky valley, a muddy river with many bridges, some stormy-looking clouds--"
"Well--" Her eyes sparkled, and then she pursed her mouth as one determined not to let out secrets before the fulness of time.
"I hadn't noticed the smoke in the valley, or the mud in the river, and _certainly_ wasn't thinking about the scenery at all. I never do."
"So horrid dull. Not just this--_all_ scenery."
"Oh, dreadful! And it's just the same with birds and trees, and all the things the poets make such a time about. _I_ can't be bothered."
"Really!" Ethan was laughing at her harassed, overdone look.
"Oh, do forgive me! I quite forgot you were a poet, too."
"I'll forgive you on condition you tell me what you'd write about if _you_ were a poet."
"Why, people, of course. People are the only things that matter. I _always_ skip the scenery. Everybody does, only they don't tell." She had lowered her voice, as if the very faded grasses and the sunburnt golden-rod might gossip of the heresy. "It's been rather hard on me that my father, who is so interesting and wonderful to talk to about everything else, should waste so much time on trees and things. I've thought more than once that some day, when he's in better health, I'll just tell him." She nodded portentously.
"Oh, I should tell him just honestly the beauties of Nature make me sick."
A pause of satisfaction at finally unburdening her soul, and then a little start. She studied Ethan's face with some anxiety.
"I'm forgetting again that you-- Do you mind if I don't care much about--" She made a vindictive gesture towards a small, wry-growing oak-tree clinging desperately to the side of the hill below them. "Do you mind?"
"Why should you? I don't mind that you hate my jacket--at least, not much. I tell you what, we'll make a compact. I'll never wear velvet or mullein leaves while you're here, and you will never mention the scenery."
They shook hands. A sudden impulse made him loath to loosen his grasp. As he did so:
"Now tell me," he said, "what _were_ you looking at with such a rapture of expectation. What interests you in that dirty little town?"