toward the house. He was busy reading a newspaper while he walked, but
he was not the tall man with the shrewd blue eyes and the knowing
little smile; which was some comfort to Jack. He closed the door and
turned again toward the two; and because he knew he must furnish some
plausible reason for his presence, he said the first thing that came
to his tongue--the thing that is always permissible and always
plausible.

"Fellow told me I might get a job here. How about it?" Then he smiled
good-naturedly and with a secret admiration for his perfect aplomb in
rising to the emergency.

"You'll have to ask Supervisor Ross about that," said one. "He's in
there." He turned his thumb toward the rear room, the door of which
stood wide open, and bent again over the map he had been studying. So
far as these two were concerned, Jack had evidently ceased to exist.
He went, therefore, to the room where the supervisor was at work
filling in a blank of some kind; and because his impromptu speech had
seemed to fill perfectly his requirements, he repeated it to Ross in
exactly the same tone of careless good nature, except that this time
he really meant part of it; because, when he came to think of it, he
really did want a job of some sort, and the very atmosphere of quiet,
unhurried efficiency that pervaded the place made him wish that he
might become a part of it.

It was a vagrant wish that might have died as quickly as it had been
born; an impulse that had no root in any previous consideration of the
matter. But Ross leaned back in his chair and was regarding him
seriously, as a possible employee of the government, and Jack
instinctively squared his shoulders to meet the look.