s all. I can't
help it, and it cuts me up when I come to my senses more than it
possibly can anybody else. There! Shall we be friends and co-workers, or
not?"

She held out her small gloved hand, and as he warmly clasped it, a flush
that was so strange to his bronzed cheek it fairly colored for its own
temerity, made his face foolishly warm. He laughed out like a boy.

"Why, you are the boss, of course," he said with a ring of delight in
his voice. "I shall do exactly what you tell me to--how could I help
it?"

"No, you must help it," gravely. "I really am young and inexperienced,
as Mr. Barrington says. But these ideas are better than I--they really
are! When you come to see what I mean, and what I want to do, you will
approve, I am sure."

She was so eager for this approval that he felt positively dazed by the
situation. He could not follow such spiral flights, such swoopings and
dartings of mood. He could only look on and be ready to her hand the
instant she might alight beside him. So he only murmured, "Depend upon
me for any assistance whatever!" thinking meanwhile, with a sense of
relief, "Aunt Margaret will understand her; she's a woman."

They had barely stepped within the modern hall when a tall figure
advanced between the heavy portieres at one side to meet them. Mrs.
Margaret Phelps was rather finely formed, but had no other beauty except
a heavy head of silvery white hair. Yet Joyce thought, for a homely
woman she was the best-looking one she had ever seen! There was sense
and kindness in her face, as well as a certain self-respect, which drew
out answering respect to meet it. She acknowledged her nephew's
introduction with that embarrassed stiffness common to those unused to
social forms, but the grasp of her large hand was warm and consoling,
and her voice had a hearty genuineness, as she remarked,

"My nephew, George, says you've been looking at the Works. It isn't many
young ladies would care to come so far outside of the city just to see
them. They wouldn't think it worth while."

Joyce exchanged a quick glance with Dalton and knew her identity had not
been divulged, so answered easily,

"Oh, don't you think so? It was like an enchanted land to me this
morning! It was all so far beyond me I could only look on and wonder;
but to watch a vase grow into perfect form at a breath was a real marvel
of creation."

"Well, yes, I guess it's so. I always feel that way, too, when I see an
engine. It se