you would note down in your mind some points of her conversation.
I'm really curious to know what a girl of her traditions thinks about
the world when she first sees it. Her mind must be in most respects
an unbroken wilderness. She's had schooling, of course, and she knows
her grammar and algebra; but she can't have had any cultivation. If
she were of an earlier generation, one would expect to find something
biblical in her; but you can't count upon a Puritanic culture now
among our country folks."

"If you are so curious," said Dunham, "why don't you study her mind,
yourself?"

"No, no, that wouldn't do," Staniford answered. "The light of your
innocence upon hers is invaluable. I can understand her better through
you. You must go on. I will undertake to make your peace with Miss
Hibbard."

The young men talked as they walked the deck and smoked in the
starlight. They were wakeful after their long nap in the afternoon,
and they walked and talked late, with the silences that old friends
can permit themselves. Staniford recurred to his loss of money and his
Western projects, which took more definite form now that he had placed
so much distance between himself and their fulfillment. With half a
year in Italy before him, he decided upon a cattle-range in Colorado.
Then, "I should like to know," he said, after one of the pauses, "how
two young men of our form strike that girl's fancy. I haven't any
personal curiosity about her impressions, but I should like to know,
as an observer of the human race. If my conjectures are right, she's
never met people of our sort before."