the bit for five minutes. She'll rin away wid ye. Ye
can't till me anything about women."

"No, nor I don't want to. Now you jest shut up, Mike. I'm tired a
hearin' ye. This thing about women is one as has half the fun of it in
larnin' it as ye go along. Ye mean well enough, Mike, but yer eddication
is poor; an' if it's all the same to ye, I'll take my pudden straight
an' leave yer sarse for them as likes it."

Jim's utter rejection of the further good offices of Mike, in the
endeavor to instruct him in the management of his future relations with
the little woman, did not sink very deep into the Irishman's
sensibilities. Indeed, it could not have done so, for their waters were
shallow, and, as at this moment Mike's "owld woman" called both to
dinner, the difference was forgotten in the sympathy of hunger and the
satisfactions of the table.

Jim felt that he was undergoing a change--had undergone one, in fact. It
had never revealed itself to him so fully as it did during his
conversation with Mike. The building of the hotel, the study of the
wants of another grade of civilization than that to which he had been
accustomed, the frequent conversations with Miss Butterworth, the
responsibilities he had assumed, all had tended to lift him; and he felt
that Mike Conlin was no longer a tolerable companion. The shallowness of
the Irishman's mind and life disgusted him, and he knew that the time
would soon come when, by a process as natural as the falling of the
leaves in autumn, he should drop a whole class of associations, and
stand where he could look down upon them--where they would look up to
him. The position of principal, the command of men, the conduct of, and
the personal responsibility for, a great enterprise, had given him
conscious growth. His old life and his old associations were
insufficient to contain him.

After dinner they started on, for the first time accompanied by Mike's
wife. Before her marriage she had lived the life common to her
class--that of cook and housemaid in the families of gentlemen. She knew
the duties connected with the opening of a house, and could bring its
machinery into working order. She could do a thousand things that a man
either could not do, or would not think of doing; and Jim had arranged
that she should be housekeeper until the mistress of the establishment
should be installed in her office.

The sun had set before they arrived at the river, and the boats of the
two guides, w