hesitation. ``It's a trade for each of them. The engineer's
work is all the more absorbing, I imagine, when the difficulties
are greatest. He has the fun of overcoming them.''

``You see nothing in it then,'' she asked, ``but a source of
amusement?''

``Oh, yes, a good deal more,'' he replied. ``A livelihood, for
one thing. I--I have been an engineer all my life. I built that
road Mr. King is talking about.''


An hour later, when Mrs. Porter made the move to go, Miss Langham
rose with a protesting sigh. ``I am so sorry,'' she said, ``it
has been most interesting. I never met two men who had visited
so many inaccessible places and come out whole. You have quite
inspired Mr. King, he was never so amusing. But I should like to
hear the end of that adventure; won't you tell it to me in the
other room?''

Clay bowed. ``If I haven't thought of something more interesting
in the meantime,'' he said.

``What I can't understand,'' said King, as he moved up into Miss
Langham's place, ``is how you had time to learn so much of the
rest of the world. You don't act like a man who had spent
his life in the brush.''

``How do you mean?'' asked Clay, smiling--``that I don't use the
wrong forks?''