She laughed softly.

“No, I don’t care for riches,” she replied.  “I am quite sure that just as great education proves to one how little one knows, so great wealth brings one face to face with the truth of how little one can enjoy.  My father used to say that the golden treasure at the end of the rainbow in every human life was happiness, and that is something which you cannot buy.  So why crave riches, then?  But please don’t let my foolish ideas disappoint you.  I’ll promise to be properly excited.”

She saw his face suddenly aflame with enthusiasm.

“By George, but you’re a—­a brick, Joanne!” he exclaimed.  “You are!  And I—­I——­” He was fumbling in his breast pocket.  He brought out his wallet and extracted from it the bit of paper Stevens had given him.  “You dropped that, and Stevens found it,” he explained, giving it to her.  “I thought those figures might represent your fortune—­or your income.  Don’t mind telling you I went over ’em carefully.  There’s a mistake in the third column.  Five and four don’t make seven.  They make nine.  In the final, when you come to the multiplication part of it, that correction will make you just thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars richer.”

“Thanks,” said Joanne, lowering her eyes, and beginning to tear the paper into small pieces.  “And will it disappoint you, Mr. John Aldous, if I tell you that all these figures stand for riches which some one else possesses?  And won’t you let me remind you that we’re getting a long way from what I want to know—­about your trip into the North?”

“That’s just it:  we’re hot on the trail,” chuckled Aldous, deliberately placing her hand on his arm again.  “You don’t care for riches.  Neither do I. I’m delighted to know we’re going tandem in that respect.  I’ve never had any fun with money.  It’s the money that’s had fun with me.  I’ve no use for yachts and diamonds and I’d rather travel afoot with a gun over my shoulder than in a private car.  Half the time I’m doing my own cooking, and I haven’t worn a white shirt in a year.  My publishers persist in shoving more money my way than I know what to do with.

“You see, I pay only ten cents a plug for my smoking tobacco, and other things accordingly.  Somebody has said something about the good Lord sitting up in Heaven and laughing at the jokes He plays on men.  Well, I’m sitting back and laughing now and then at the tussle between men and money over all creation.  There’s a whole lot of humour in the way men and women fight and die for money, if you only take time to stand out on the side and look on.  There’s nothing big or dramatic about it.  I may be a heathen, but to my mind the funniest of all things is to see the world wringing its neck for a dollar.  And Donald—­old History—­needs even less money than I. So that puts the big element of humour in this expedition of ours.  We don’t want money, particularly.  Donald wouldn’t wear more than four pairs of boots a year if he was a billionaire.  And yet——­”