'It reminds me of a poultry-yard,' he said. 'An Englishman, on the rare occasions when he lays an egg, has to flap his wings and crow over it, instead of sitting down to hatch it. Why, I suppose they've given fifty lunches to boards of the directors over this twopenny-halfpenny line of mine already. There was a luncheon on the formation of the board; there was a luncheon to celebrate their determination to set to work at once; there was a luncheon to celebrate their doing so. There was a dinner on the occasion of the cutting of the first sod of earth; they brought down some fool-sort of Highness to do it. They had a week at the seaside when the Bill passed through the House, and when the first train runs next month, they'll all go and have a rest-cure on the completion of their labours. What they want is something to cure them of their habit of always resting.' He got up from his chair in some impatience, folded up the maps, and stood looking at his daughter in silence for a moment. 'Say, Amelie,' he said, 'and what kind of time have you been having? All going serene and domestically? Bertie been behaving himself? Do either of you want anything? You look a bit down, somehow--kind of tired about the eyes.' Amelie looked up at him; the 'tired about the eyes' seemed to be a wonderfully true interpretation of how she felt. 'Oh, we trot along,' she said. 'I suppose everyone has their bits of worries. Mamma has when she accepts three dinner invitations for the same evening. You have when your directors give luncheon-parties instead of doing business. We all have.' 'Can't see why you should,' he said. 'I don't like you to worry, Amelie. What's it all about?' He paused a moment. 'Have you heard anything about Bertie which bothers you?' he asked; 'or hasn't he been good to you?' She did not answer at once, for, in her rather super-sensitized frame of mind, it seemed to her that her father's first question was not vague or general, but that he had some special, definite reason for asking. From that it was but the shortest of links necessary to couple the question with that which grew mushroom-like in the shadow of her mind. 'No; he has been perfectly good to me, and I have heard nothing that bothers me,' she said.