“No,” he replied coldly, “that is not it.  You have missed it about as far as you could.  I have no such picturesque notion.  I am doing no such quixotic thing.  I value my training too highly for that.  It should be worth too much to them.  I don’t even scorn personal ambition, or the use of personal pull, so you see I’m a long way from a heroic figure.  I know I’ve a brain that can do a certain type of thing.  I know I’m well equipped.  Well, so far as the equipment goes, my country did it for me and I mean to give it back; only I’ve got to do it in my own way.”

“Why, Katie,” he resumed after a pause, “I never was more surprised in my life than to find you so out of sympathy with this.  I knew what most people would think of it, but I quite took it for granted that you would understand.”

“It seems a little hard,” replied Katie with a tearful laugh, “to understand the fine things other people do.  And, Wayne, I’m so afraid it will lead to disappointment!  Aren’t you idealizing this forest service?  Remember Fred’s tales of how it’s almost strangled by politics.  And you know what that means.  Let us not forget Martha Matthews!”

It was a relief to be laughing together over a familiar thing.  Martha Matthews was the daughter of a congressman from somewhere—­Katie never could remember whether it was Texas or Wyoming.  She had been asked to “take her up” at one time when the army appropriation bill was pending and Martha’s father did not seem to realize that the country needed additional defense.  But when Martha discovered that army people were “perfectly fascinating—­and so hospitable” Martha’s parent suddenly awakened to the grave dangers confronting his land.  Katie had more than once observed a mysterious relationship between the fact of the army set being fashionable in Washington and the fact that the country must be amply protected, further remarking that army people were just clever enough to know when to be fascinating.

“No,” he came back to it in seriousness, “I don’t think I have many illusions.  I know it’s far from the perfect thing, but I see it as set in the right direction.  It seems to me that that, in itself, ought to mean considerable.  It’s the best thing I know of—­for what I have to offer.  Then I want to get out of cities for awhile—­get Ann away from them.”  He paused over that and fell silent.  “Osborne offered me a job,” he came back to it with a laugh.  “Seemed to think I was worth a very neat sum a year to his company—­but that was scarcely my notion.  In fact I doubt if I would have so much confidence in the forest service if it weren’t for his hatred of it.  You can judge a thing pretty well by the character of its enemies.  Then I’m enough the creature of habit to want to go on in a service; I’m schooled to that thing of the collectivity.  But I’ll be happier in a service that—­despite the weak spots in it—­is in harmony with the big collectivity—­rather than hopelessly discordant with it.  And perhaps it needs some more or less disinterested fellows to help fight for it,” he added with a touch of embarrassment, as if fearing to expose himself.