Johnny's jaw dropped in unaffected amazement.
"All this while? Before you and Leo hit Rainbow?"
"And you workin' for forty a month and stealin' your own beef?--then saving up and buying your little old brand along with Beebe and Leo and old Wes', joggin' along, workin' like a yaller dog with fleas?"
"Why not? Wasn't I having a heap of fun? Where can I see any better time than I had here, or find better friends? Money's no good by itself. I haven't drawn a dollar from Arizona since I left. It was fun to make the mine go round at first; but when it got so it'd work I looked for something else more amusing."
"I should think you'd want to travel, anyhow."
"Travel?" echoed Jeff. "Travel? Why, you damn fool, I'm here now!"
"Will you stay here, if you marry her, Jeff?"
"So you've no objection to make, if I've got a few dollars? That squares everything all right, does it? Not a yeep of protest from you now? See here, you everlasting fool! I'm just the same man I was fifteen minutes ago when you thought I didn't have any money. If I'm fit for her now, I was then. If I wasn't good enough then, I'm not good enough now."
"But I wasn't thinking of her--I was thinking of--how it would look."
"Look? Who cares how it looks? Just a silly prejudice! 'They say--what say they--let them say!' Johnny, maybe I was just stringin' you. If I was lying about the money--how about it then? Changed your mind again?"
"Shan't tell you! It doesn't really make any difference, anyhow."
"Helen's lips are drifting dust; Ilion is consumed with rust; All the galleons of Greece Drink the ocean's dreamless peace; Lost was Solomon's purple show Restless centuries ago; Stately empires wax and wane-- Babylon, Barbary and Spain-- Only one thing, undefaced, Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste And the heavens are overturned, --Dear, how long ago we learned!"
Starlit and moonlight leagues, the slow, fresh dawn; in the cool of the morning, Bransford came to the crest of the ground-swell known as Frenchman's Ridge, and saw low-lying Arcadia dim against the north, a toy town huddling close to the shelter of Rainbow Range; he splashed through the shallow waters of Alamo, failing to a trickle before it sank in the desert sands; and so came at last to the moat of Arcadia. With what joyous and eager-choking heart-beat you may well guess: not the needlessness of those swift pulses or of that joy. For Ellinor was not there. With Mrs. Hoffman, she had gone to visit the Sutherlands at Rainbow's End. And Jeff could not go on. Arcadia rose to greet him in impromptu Roman holiday.