Not till I make a remark,said Willock,laying aside his pipe.Honey,do yon know what I mean by a vision?It calls for a big vision to take in a big person,and you ain't got it.Maybe it wasn't meant for women,or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks,so no blame laid and nobody judged,according.If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose,a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory,why,you ain't got a big vision.I've got it,for I was born in the West,and I've lived all my life,peaceable and calm,right out here or hereabouts.You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision.You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe,to know what can be did when men is free,not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers.Back East,folks is straining themselves to make over,and improve,and polish up what they found ready-to-hand--but here out West,we creates.It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West,and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject.
Lahoma did not reply,and Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence,she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton.He need not have been afraid.To her imagination,big peoplewere not living in dugouts,or tents,far from civilization;big peoplewere going to the opera every night,and riding in splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day.Brick and Bill had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed.She had no great opinion of agriculture;and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest,she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work.As to dugouts,they had no place in her dreams of the future.Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound her,even the thought of him was to be banished from her world,banished absolutely.