"You mustn't expect to see aristocracy here; this is too cheap, and too
easy to reach. Your aristocrat prefers less beauty at greater effort
and more cost. This is the place to touch elbows with the populace."
They had climbed down the long winding steps by this time, and were
leaning against the parapet of a small rustic bridge that crossed below
the Falls.
"Let's sit down on that bench," said Dick, "and let the sunshine trickle
through the trees and through us, and feel the spray in our nostrils,
and delight in hanging maidenhair ferns, and watch the girls go by--the
girls in pink and blue dresses, each leaning on the arm of a swain who
grins. It's vastly more fun than a fashionable parade."
The branches met overhead, darkening the narrow chasm; the steep banks
were spattered with dutchman's breeches that fluttered like butterflies
poised for a moment; down stream a few yards, where the valley widened,
lay a tiny meadow where the sun fell full on a carpet of crow-foot
violets that gave back the May sky. Two squirrels chased each other
around a big maple, and a blue jay looked on and commented.
"Why is this stream of girls and men out for their holiday like baked
ice-cream?" asked Dick. "That isn't a conundrum; it's a philosophic
question."
"I know, they give you the same sense of incongruity," Ellery answered
lazily.
"But I like them," Dick pursued. "I like a great many more kinds of
people than you do, Norris. You are narrow-minded. You want to associate
only with the good and true and bathed."
"Oh, I wish well to the majority of the race, but there are some that I
do not care to eat with."
Something in Ellery's voice made his friend turn and survey him.
"You look tired. You're working too hard. Don't make the western mistake
of thinking frazzled nerves mean energy."
"That isn't my kind," Ellery smiled. "I'm all right. Let me spurt for a
while. I got my position through favor, Dick, yours and Uncle Joe's. I
didn't particularly deserve it, and I didn't know anything about the
work; so, for your sake as well as my own, I have determined to make
good. Friendship may give a fellow his chance, but it doesn't hold down
a job, you know."
"Pooh! You've made good already. A man can be tremendously
experienced--for the West--when he's been at a thing a year. Look at me
and my work."
"What do you consider your work? Road inspector?" For, to tell the
truth, Norris was not wholly satisfied with Dick's year of dawdling
around the streets.
"My profession," Dick answered with oracular gravity, "is a combination
of hard work and fine art. It requires both toil and genius. I think I
may say, with all natural modesty, that I have shown great natural
aptitude for it. My profession is making friends. I have made friends
useful and ornamental, friends great and small, friends beautiful and
friends the opposite--which reminds me of your previous question, city
politics. Whom do you suppose I supped with last night?"