The girl nodded carelessly.

“Where did you learn stenography?” asked Bob.

“Oh, I got that out of a ten-cent magazine too.”  She sat on a bench, looked up at the sky through the trees, and drew a deep breath.

“You’re tired,” said Bob.

“Not a bit,” she denied.  “But I don’t often get a chance to just look up.”

“You seem to do the gardening, the cooking, the housework, the clerical work—­you don’t do the laundry, too, do you?” demanded Bob ironically.

“You noticed those miserable khakis!” cried Amy with a gesture of dismay.  “Ashley,” she called, “change those khakis before you go out,”

“Yes, mama,” came back a mock childish voice.

“What’s your salary?” demanded Bob bluntly, nodding toward the office.

“What?” she asked, as though puzzled.

“Didn’t you say you were the clerk?”

“Oh, I see.  I just help Ashley out.  He could never get through the field work and the office work both.”

“Doesn’t the Service allow him a clerk?”

“Not yet; but it will in time.”

“What is Mr. Thorne’s salary?”

“Well, really——­”

“Oh, I beg pardon,” cried Bob flushing; “I just meant supervisors’ salaries, of course.  I wasn’t prying, really.  It’s all a matter of public record, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”  The girl checked herself.  “Well, it’s eighteen hundred—­and something for expenses.”

“Eighteen hundred!” cried Bob.  “Do you mean to say that the two of you give all your time for that!  Why, we pay a good woods foreman pretty near that!”

“And that’s all you do pay him,” said the girl quietly.  “Money wage isn’t the whole pay for any job that is worth doing.”

“Don’t understand,” said Bob briefly.

“We belong to the Service,” she stated with a little movement of pride.  “Those tasks in life which give a high moneyed wage, generally give only that.  Part of our compensation is that we belong to the Service; we are doing something for the whole people, not just for ourselves.”  She caught Bob’s half-smile, more at her earnestness than at her sentiment, and took fire.  “You needn’t laugh!” she cried.  “It’s small now, but that’s because it’s the beginning, because we have the privilege of being the forerunners, the pioneers!  The time will come when in this country there will be three great Services—­the Army, the Navy, the Forest; and an officer in the one will be as much respected and looked up to as the others!  Perhaps more!  In the long times of peace, while they are occupied with their eternal Preparation, we shall be labouring at Accomplishment.”

She broke off abruptly.

“If you don’t want to get me started, don’t be superior,” she ended, half apologetic, half resentful.

“But I do want to get you started,” said Bob.

“It’s amusing, I don’t doubt.”

“Not quite that:  it’s interesting, and I am no longer bewildered at the eighteen hundred a year—­that is,” he quoted a popular song, “’if there are any more at home like you.’”