But this his
friend had expressly forbidden. Welton ended by saying nothing about it.
He resolved first to write Orde.

"You might tell me what this new job is, though," he said at last, in
apparent acquiescence.

Bob hesitated. "You won't understand; and I won't be able to make you
understand," he said. "I'm going to enter the Forest Service!"

"What!" cried Welton, in blank astonishment. "What's that?"

"I've about decided to take service as a ranger," stated Bob, his face
flushing.

From that moment all Welton's anxiety seemed to vanish. It became
unbearably evident that he looked on all this as the romance of youth.
Bob felt himself suddenly reduced, in the lumberman's eyes, to the
status of the small boy who wants to be a cowboy, or a sailor, or an
Indian fighter. Welton looked on him with an indulgent eye as on one who
would soon get enough of it. The glamour--whatever it was--would soon
wear off; and then Bob, his fling over, would return to sober, real
business once more. All Welton's joviality returned. From time to time
he would throw a facetious remark in Bob's direction, when, in the
course of the day's work, he happened to pass.

"It's sure going to be fine to wear a real tin star and be an officer!"

Or:

"Bob, it sure will seem scrumptious to ride out and boss the whole
country--on ninety a month. Guess I'll join you."

Or:

"You going to make me sweep up my slashings, or will a rake do, Mr.
Ranger?"

To these feeble jests Bob always replied good-naturedly. He did not
attempt to improve Welton's conception of his purposes. That must come
with time. To his father, however, he wrote at great length; trying his
best to explain the situation. Mr. Orde replied that a government
position was always honourable; but confessed himself disappointed that
his son had not more steadfastness of purpose. Welton received a reply
to his own letter by the same mail.

"I shouldn't tell him anything," it read. "Let him go be a ranger, or a
cowboy, or anything else he wants. He's still young. I didn't get my
start until I was thirty; and the business is big enough to wait for
him. You keep pegging along, and when he gets enough, he'll come back.
He's apparently got some notions of serving the public, and doing good
in the world, and all that. We all get it at his age. By and by he'll
find out that tending to his business honestly is about one man's job."

So, without active opposition, and with only tacit dis