“I hope you will always remember that, David--and let it be clean money,” she said soberly; and then, with a quick return to the playful mood: “Here we are, just in time for dinner. I shall introduce you to the houseful as my cradle-brother--may I?--and after dinner you may go your way with father and get yourself properly ‘fired.’” Drawing pretty heavily upon the simplicities, David won through the social preliminaries without calling any marked attention to himself. Miss Virginia’s “houseful” made an even dozen at the rather resplendent dinner-table, and the naïvely inquisitive young wife of an elderly stock-broker, who was David’s elbow companion, and who kept him busy answering childish questions about his profession, saved him from particularizing too curiously as to the others, though he was observant enough to note that none of the many competitors he had had at Palm Beach was among them. At the table dispersal he found himself at once in the clutches of the master of the house. “Come on into my den and we’ll break away from all this hullaballoo,” growled the king of the man-drivers; and when the coveted privacy was secured: “Pull up a chair and smoke. You’ll find cigars in that sponge-box, or pipes and tobacco on the mantel. How did you leave the bridge?” “We are working on the closing span, and two months more ought to see the rails down and the trains running over them,” David reported, settling himself in a deep chair with one of the long-stemmed pipes. “Now that the cold weather is over, there is nothing to hold us back.” “Lose much concrete in the freezing?” “No; very little. We used your idea of tarpaulin coverings and a perforated steam-pipe and saved practically every yard we put in place. There was some little kicking on the part of the inspectors, but we got by with nearly all of it.” “Huh!” grunted the big man. “A bunch of inspectors wouldn’t be happy if they couldn’t find something to kick about! That’ll do for the bridge. We’ll call it a back-number for you and pass it up. I’ve been letting you alone at Coulee du Sac; wanted to see what you were going to make of yourself--what you were made of.” “I hope I haven’t disappointed you too badly,” David ventured. “You haven’t; if you had, you wouldn’t be here to-night. Now then; are you ready to tackle something a good deal bigger than an assistant’s job on a concrete bridge?” “I’ll tackle anything you give me; though I’m not asking you to push me any faster or farther than the good of the service will warrant.” “Don’t you lose any sleep over that,” was the gruff retort. “You’ll never get any plums from me merely because you happen to be Adam Vallory’s son. For that matter, the shoe’s on the other foot. I’m thinking about giving you a hard job--a damned hard job. What do you know about the Nevada Short Line new-alignment project out in the Timanyoni country?” David shook his head in token that he knew little.