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"In a moment," the other assented drowsily. "If sounds do not attract you, what about scents? All the week I have worked with the poisonous smell of leather and of oil in my nostrils. Just now I am perfectly sure that we are near some wild sweetbriar. Put your head down, Matthew, and smell the earth itself. There's something rich about it, like sunwarmed herbs. There's sap, too, bursting out from the trunk of the pine tree against which you are leaning. Not even that foul tobacco which you are smoking—thank heavens the breeze is the other way!—can poison this atmosphere."

"It is very good tobacco," Matthew replied stolidly. "It is strong, I know, but it is very cheap, and, being strong, one does not desire to smoke so much of it."

"There is not the slightest doubt but that some day you will be a millionaire," Philip declared.

"I intend to be," was the calm rejoinder.

"Any further ambitions?" Rosina asked, opening her very beautiful hazel eyes for a moment.

"What others could there be?" Matthew demanded. "The only choice in life seems to me to be the means by which one can make money."