urious kind of reflected majesty that these important functionaries
get, who take at first hand the magnificent orders, and sustain
temporary relations of silk-and-velvet intimacy with Spreadsplendid
Park.

The hour was up. Mary Pinfall slid her romance into the pocket of
her waterproof; Matilda Meane swallowed her last mouthful of the
four cream-cakes which she had valorously demolished without
assistance, and hastily washed her hands at the faucet; Kate and
Elise and Grace brushed by her with a sniff of generous contempt.

In two minutes, the wheels and feeds were buzzing and clicking
again. What did they say, and emphasize, and repeat, in the ears
that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always.
They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or
memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and
consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the
rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it
can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started with in
mind or heart?

CHAPTER XI.

CRISTOFERO.

A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York,
two days from her port.

A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white
crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm,
which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them
breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of
foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in
their manes.

The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a
morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet,
as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and
eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste
in the heart.

Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of
their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail.

One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel,
Boston,--coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight
weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright,
younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright,
tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone
out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a
ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the
business for himself; for the two last, he had repre