ah; ef dat'll do."

"What is that, papa; no luncheon to-day?" asked a young woman, coming
down the compartment to stand beside the President's chair.

There was a family resemblance, but in the daughter the magic of
femineity had softened the severer characteristics until they became
winsome and good to look upon. The cool gray eyes of the father were
Gertrude's inheritance, also; but in the eyes of the daughter the
calculating stare became the steady gaze of clean-hearted guilelessness;
and in her even-tinted complexion there was only a suggestion of the
sallow olive of the father's clean-shaven face. For face and figure,
Gertrude owed much to birth and breeding, and it was small wonder that
Frederick Brockway had lost his heart to her in time-honored and
romantic fashion.

The President answered his daughter's query without taking his eyes from
the big-bodied cook.

"No; there is something the matter with the range. Ask the others if
they would prefer a cold luncheon in the car to the _table d'hote_ at
the dinner station."

Gertrude went to the other end of the compartment and stated the case to
Mrs. Dunham, the chaperon of the party; to Priscilla and Hannah
Beaswicke, two young women of the Annex; to Chester Fleetwell, A.B.,
Harvard, by the skin of his teeth, but the ablest oarsman of his class
by a very safe majority; and to Mr. Harold Quatremain, the President's
secretary.

The dinner station carried it unanimously, and Gertrude announced the
vote.

"We're all agreed upon the _table d'hote_," she said; and the
Falstaffian negro shook himself free and backed into the vestibule.
"What is its name? and when do we arrive?"

"I'll have to inquire," Mr. Vennor replied. "I'll go forward and have
the conductor wire ahead for a separate table."

But Gertrude said: "Please don't; let's go with the crowd for once. I'm
so tired of being always specialized."

The President's smile was suggestive of the metallic smirk on the face
of a George-the-Fourth penny. "Just as you please," he rejoined; "but
I'll go and find out when and where."

Now it chanced that at this precise moment Brockway had laid his hand on
the Tadmor's door-knob preparatory to taking the plunge; and when he
opened the door he found himself face to face with the President.
Whereupon he fell back and lost the power of speech, while the incomer
appraised him with his eyes and tried to remember where he had seen him
before. Recognition brought with