pulling at a flower in the
centre-piece. He had ceased to smile. Miss Langham turned on him
somewhat sharply, resenting his silence, and said, with a slight
challenge in her voice:--

"Do you agree, Mr. Clay," she asked, "or do you prefer the
chocolate-cream soldiers, in red coats and gold lace?"

"Oh, I don't know," the young man answered, with some slight
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?"

"No," laughed King, "but you told us that this was your first visit
East, and yet you're talking about England and Vienna and Voisin's.
How is it you've been there, while you have never been in New York?"

"Well, that's partly due to accident and partly to design," Clay
answered. "You see I've worked for English and German and French
companies, as well as for those in the States, and I go abroad to make
reports and to receive instructions. And then I'm what you call a
self-made man; that is, I've never been to college. I've always had to
educate myself, and whenever I did get a holiday it seemed to me that I
ought to put it to the best advantage, and to spend it where
civilization was the furthest advanced--advanced, at least, in years.
When I settle down and become an expert, and demand large sums for just
looking at the work other fellows have done, then I hope to live in New
York,