“she didn’t give a flip about being overly nice,” which was the exact truth.  That required subtleties beyond Kate’s depth, for she was at times alarmingly casual.  So she held her letter and thought about John Jardine.  As she thought, she decided that she did not know whether she was in love with him or not; she thought she was.  She liked being with him, she liked all he did for her, she would miss him if he went away, she would be proud to be his wife, but she did wish that he were interested in land, instead of inventions and stocks and bonds.  Stocks and bonds were almost as evanescent as rainbows to Kate.  Land was something she could understand and handle.  Maybe she could interest him in land; if she could, that would be ideal.  What a place his wealth would buy and fit up.  She wondered as she studied John Jardine, what was in his head; if he truly intended to ask her to be his wife, and since reading Nancy Ellen’s letter, when?  She should let the Trustee know if she were not going to teach the school again; but someway, she rather wanted to teach the school.  When she started anything she did not know how to stop until she finished.  She had so much she wanted to teach her pupils the coming winter.

Suddenly John asked:  “Kate, if you could have anything you wanted, what would you have?”

“Two hundred acres of land,” she said.

“How easy!” laughed John, rising to find a seat for his mother who was approaching them.  “What do you think of that, Mother?  A girl who wants two hundred acres of land more than anything else in the world.”

“What is better?” asked Mrs. Jardine.

“I never heard you say anything about land before.”

“Certainly not,” said his mother, “and I’m not saying anything about it now, for myself; but I can see why it means so much to Kate, why it’s her natural element.”

“Well, I can’t,” he said.  “I meet many men in business who started on land, and most of them were mighty glad to get away from it.  What’s the attraction?”

Kate waved her hand toward the distance.

“Oh, merely sky, and land, and water, and trees, and birds, and flowers, and fruit, and crops, and a few other things scarcely worth mentioning,” she said, lightly.  “I’m not in the mood to talk bushels, seed, and fertilization just now; but I understand them, they are in my blood.  I think possibly the reason I want two hundred acres of land for myself is because I’ve been hard on the job of getting them for other people ever since I began to work, at about the age of four.”

“But if you want land personally, why didn’t you work to get it for yourself?” asked John Jardine.

“Because I happened to be the omega of my father’s system,” answered Kate.