Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/114

106 don't know how to use the tools I have to work with."

He stopped abruptly and let his hands fall limply to his sides. Then he asked very simply:

"Will you teach me?"

In such a manner, the John Taylor who had come to the Blueberry to humor his father, that he might win wealth without soiling his great hands and who had first learned that there is some money from which fair-minded men recoil, reached the understanding that the reward is only one factor in achievement; in such a manner the John Taylor, who had been self-assured and self-satisfied and superficial, humbled himself, yet in that deference was nothing servile, but rather it had the nobility of simplicity and frankness; in such a manner, the man who had set out to find material things which would make one woman happy, came to another woman to find that peace which can come only with respect of self.

Helen's hands dropped to her chair arms and a happy flush spread over her cheeks, brightening her large eyes.

"I will teach you all I can, John Taylor!" she said.

Like an ambitious boy on his first job he sat that night while she sketched for him the rudiments of what he must learn before he could know what was being done for him. There was talk of Schribner rule and Doyle rule; allowance for defect, mill over-run; of costs and markets; of lumber grades and transportation, of felling and bucking and swamping; of circular and bandsaws and kerf, of those fundamentals which he had hoped to skip in any business; talk of the grubbing he had loathed, and this night he did not shy from it, but questioned and listened and remembered.

It was late when he rose. Helen followed him to the