"Jack ashore," I called one the
other day. "Possibly so! Possibly," answered the delicious boy, "but
I prefer to think of myself as March--in like a lion and out like a
lamb."

The whole Town is a foraging pasture for the engineers on vacation.
They buy everything they do not need, from gramaphone records and
swearing parrots to Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.
They yell into the telephones as if it were a lung tester, and it makes
their hearts dance like daffodils to hire taxicabs for the day, boxes
at the theatre, and to give suppers and dances to all and sundry of
their acquaintances. Neither are they laggards in love. They are
vastly appreciative of the girls, and I am told go sweethearting with a
directness there is no possibility of misunderstanding. It is well the
girls do not take them too seriously, for they are roving bachelors
all, and would seem to be as faithful as the poet who vows his love for
Kate, and Margaret and Betty and Sweet Marie.

Yet, once in a blue moon, an engineer and a girl make decision "to be
man and wife together," and to live in a shack on the Residency, much
to the annoyance of the townsmen, who dislike the engineers, being
inordinately jealous of them.

The game of baseball which the engineers carry forward on the highway
is strenuous rather than scientific. Things that are considered
important in the league matches have no significance here. As I watch
the pitch and toss of the ball, it occurs to me that this game has
filtered down the ages from the primeval woods where orang-outangs
threw nuts from tree to tree. They pitch them that the young lady
'rangs might admire their cleverness and good form. You may credit me
this was the way of it.

A Chinaman and some Indians are also watching the game. The Indians
think it fine fun, and fetch and carry the lost balls like spaniels
retrieving sticks. I like the Indian men for several reasons, but
chiefly because they are shrewd riders; have a sovereign indifference
to appearance, and never quarrel over theology.

The game of ball was not completed, the interest of the players being
diverted by a blindly vindictive fight between a staghound and a
bulldog. I did not see the conclusion of the fight, but the honours
lay with the bulldog. "For you must know, Dear Lady," explains one of
the engineers, "that all things considered, the grip on the throat is
an eminently practical one."

CHAPTER III

TO T