malgamite workers to the care of Roden and Von Holzen. They were
rather a depressing set of men, and Holland, as seen from the carriage
window--a snow-clad plain intersected by frozen ditches and
canals--was no more enlivening. The temperature was deadly cold; the
dull houses were rime-covered and forbidding. The malgamite makers had
been gathered together from all parts of the world in a home specially
organized for them in London. A second detachment was awaiting their
orders at Hamburg. But the principal workers were these now placed
under Cornish's care.

During the days of their arrival, when they had to be met and housed
and cared for, the visionary part of this great scheme had slowly faded
before a somewhat grim reality. Joan Ferriby had found the malgamite
workers less picturesque than she had anticipated.

"If they only washed," she had confided to Major White, "I am sure they
would be easier to deal with." And after talking French very
vivaciously and boldly with a man from Lyons, she hurried back to the
West End, and to the numerous engagements which naturally take up much
of one's time when Lent is approaching, and dilatory hospitality is
stirred up by the startling collapse of the Epiphany Sundays.

Here, however, were the malgamite workers and they had to be dealt
with. It was not quite what many had anticipated, perhaps, and Cornish
was looking forward with undisguised pleasure to the moment when he
could rid himself of these persons whom Joan had gaily designated as
"rather gruesome," and whom he frankly recognized as sordid and
uninteresting. He did not even look, as Joan had looked, to the wives
and children who were to follow as likely to prove more picturesque and
engaging.