“Of course, we can’t expect to find anybody living there.” “Why not? Nature never yet left a habitable country unoccupied. We shall undoubtedly find a race of people there—perhaps a very fine one.” He regarded me incredulously a moment, and then thumped the desk at his side vigorously. “That settles it! Johnnie’s missionary work’s cut out for her. It’s a great combination, and we can’t lose! Balloons, tablets, missionary work, and homes and firesides! A regular four-time winner!” He was about to touch the bell again when there came a light tap at the door near me, and a woman’s voice said: “Mayn’t I have some of the fun, too, Daddy?” My spirits sank the least bit. The mental image I had formed of Miss Gale, the missionary, was not altogether pleasing, while her advent was likely to put a speedy end to any thread of hope I may have picked up during my rather hilarious interview with her father. Gale, meanwhile, had risen hastily to admit her, and I had involuntarily turned. It is true the voice had been not unmusical, but certainly I was wholly unprepared for the picture in the doorway. Tall, lithe and splendid she stood there—the perfect type of America’s ideal womanhood. Gale greeted her eagerly. “Of _course_ you can hear it—I was just going to send for you. Johnnie, here’s a young man that’s going to take us to the South Pole to convert the heathen there, and provide ’em with homes and firesides. Mr. ——,” he glanced at my card, which he had kept in his hand all this time—“Mr. Nicholas Chase, my daughter, Miss Edith Gale, sometimes, by her daddy, called Johnnie, for short.” Miss Gale held out her hand cordially. I took it with no feeling of hesitation that I can now recall. And it seemed to me that I would be willing to go right on holding a hand like that and let the South Pole discover itself, or remain lost through all eternity. “I have been telling Mr. Chase,” Chauncey Gale began, when we were seated, “of our missionary-real-estate combine; how I provide outcast humanity with homes and firesides in this world, and how you look out for a home without too much fireside in it in the next; and how all the territory in this world seems to be pretty well covered in our line. Now he’s found for us, or is going to find, he says, a new world where we can do business on a big scale. Is that correct, Mr. Chase?” I looked at Miss Gale, upon whose face there was an expression, half-aggrieved, half-mystified. For one thing, it was evident that, like myself, she could not be quite certain whether her father was altogether, or only partly, in jest. She beamed graciously on me, however, which was enough. “Why, how fine that is,” she assented. “We have been wishing for some new thing to do, and some new where to go, but we never dreamed of a new world. If you can take us to one we will reward you—even to the half of our kingdom.” “Poor trade,” said Gale. “Whole world for half a kingdom. Try again.”