"And I'm offering you two thousand! And--listen to this, please, Miss Welkie. In place of a mosquito-infested shoe-box of a shack in a God-forsaken hole, we'll give you and your brother a fine concrete house on a breezy hill in God's own country--a real home, Miss Welkie, with great halls and wide verandas and sun-lighted rooms through which the sea breezes will blow at night so you can sleep in peace. A mansion, Miss Welkie, with reception and music rooms, where you can receive your friends in the style a lady should, or a man of your brother's ability should. A place to be proud of, Miss Welkie--palm-studded, clean-clipped lawn rolling down to the sea. And a sea--I'll bet you know it, Mr. Balfe--a blue-and-green sea rolling down over to coral reefs as white as dogs' teeth, a shore-front that needs only building up to be as pretty as anything in your swell Mediterranean places. What d'y' say, Welkie? And here's the contract now, all ready for you, and pay begins to-day." "It's alluring, it surely is. But I must finish here." "But you'll soon be done here. A few weeks more, they told me in Washington. What are you going to do then?" "I hadn't thought." "Well, why not think of it now? Consider your boy, what it will mean to him some day. Why not ask Miss Welkie?" Welkie turned gravely to his sister. "What do you say to that fine house with the grand dining-room, and the music-room, and a jasmine-twined pergola to sit out under of a night--and watch the moon roll up from the shining sea? I know the house--it's all that Mr. Necker says it is." "And mahogany, and all kinds of beautiful linen for the table, Miss Welkie. Imagine that, with cut glass and silver and the electric candles gleaming over it of a night." "I would dearly love to preside at the head of that table, Mr. Necker, but Mr. Balfe was speaking of something that perhaps my brother should hear about first." "What's that, Andie?" "Let it wait, Greg." "Better now. What is it?" "You may not like it." "Maybe not, but we may as well have it now, Andie." "I was to tell you that after this work is done there's another job waiting you on the west coast, just as important, just as needful of your supervision, and no more reward to it than this." "Whee-eu!" whistled Necker. "The steamer captain had him right." "Then I'm afraid"--Welkie turned to Necker--"it's off between us." "Don't say that yet. Wait till you hear. What are you working for? Leaving the money end out of it, which I know you don't care for and never will care for, what are you getting? You want recognition? And prestige? Do you get them? Not a bit. Who really knows of this work? A few engineers who keep tabs on everything, yes. Who else? Nobody. The government, for good reasons of their own, don't want it mentioned in the press. Why, it's hardly mentioned in the engineering journals." "Even so. It will go down in the records that I did it."