“Nothing, except that all of the derricks tumbled. I wired you about it. They are all up now, thank goodness.” He knew her interest was only perfunctory. Her mind, evidently, was still on Betty, but he went on with his story: “Everybody got soaking wet. Captain Joe was in the water for hours. But we stuck to it. Narrowest escape the men have had this summer, Kate, since the Screamer’s. It’s a great mercy nobody was hurt. I expected every minute some one would get crushed. No one but Captain Joe could have got them up that afternoon. It blew a gale for three days. When did you get here? I thought you had gone back to Medford until Sam brought me your note.” “No, I am still here, and shall be here for a week. Now, don’t tell me you’re going back to-night?” “No, I’m not, but I can’t say how soon; not before the masonry begins, anyhow. Jack Hardy is coming to-morrow night to my rooms. I have asked a few fellows to meet him,—Smearly and Curran, and old Bock with his 'cello, and some others. Since Jack’s engagement he’s the happiest fellow alive.” “They all are at first, Henry,” said Mrs. Leroy, laughing, her head thrown back. The memory of Jack and Helen was still so fresh and happy a one that it instantly changed her mood. Betty and Caleb for the moment were forgotten, while they talked of Helen’s future, of the change in Jack’s life, of his new housekeeping, and of the thousand and one things that interested them both,—the kind of talk that two such friends indulge in who have been parted for a week or more, and who, in the first ten minutes, run lightly over their individual experiences, so that both may start fresh again with nothing hidden in either life. When he rose to go, she kept him standing while she pinned in his buttonhole a sprig of mignonette picked from her window-box, and said, with the deepest interest, “I can’t get that poor child out of my mind. Don’t be too hard on her, Henry; she’s the one who will suffer most.” When Sanford reached his rooms again he sank into a chair which Sam had drawn close to the window, and sighed with content. “Oh, these days off!” he exclaimed. The appointments of his own apartments seemed never so satisfying and so welcome as when he had spent a week with his men, taking his share of the exposure with all the discomforts that it brought. His early life had fitted him for these changes, and a certain cosmopolitan spirit in the man, a sort of underlying stratum of Bohemianism, had made it easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings, whatever they might be. Not that his restless spirit could long have endured any life, either rough or luxurious, that repeated itself day after day. He could idle with the idlest, but he must also work when the necessity came, and that with all his might.