hink I remember every word said on both
sides, and I have thought very often of some things you said to me. In
fact, they had more influence upon my mind than you imagined."

She turned her work so that the light would fall a little more directly
upon it.

"Really?" she asked. "In what way?"

"You put in a drop or two that crystallized the whole solution," he
answered. She looked up at him inquiringly.

"Yes," he said, "I always knew that I should have to stop drifting some
time, but there never seemed to be any particular time. Some things you
said to me set the time. I am under 'full steam a-head' at present.
Behold in me," he exclaimed, touching his breast, "the future chief of
the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom you shall say some time
in the next brief interval of forty years or so, 'I knew him as a young
man, and one for whom no one would have predicted such eminence!' and
perhaps you will add, 'It was largely owing to me.'"

She looked at him with an expression in which amusement and curiosity
were blended.

"I congratulate you," she said, laughing, "upon the career in which it
appears I had the honor to start you. Am I being told that you have
taken up the law?"

"Not quite the whole of it as yet," he said; "but when I am not doing
errands for the office I am to some extent taken up with it," and then
he told her of his talk with his father and what had followed. She
overcame a refractory kink in her silk before speaking.

"It takes a long time, doesn't it, and do you like it?" she asked.

"Well," said John, laughing a little, "a weaker word than 'fascinating'
would describe the pursuit, but I hope with diligence to reach some of
the interesting features in the course of ten or twelve years."

"It is delightful," she remarked, scrutinizing the pattern of her work,
"to encounter such enthusiasm."

"Isn't it?" said John, not in the least wounded by her sarcasm.

"Very much so," she replied, "but I have always understood that it is a
mistake to be too sanguine."

"Perhaps I'd better make it fifteen years, then," he said, laughing. "I
should have a choice of professions by that time at any rate. You know
the proverb that 'At forty every man is either a fool or a physician.'"
She looked at him with a smile. "Yes," he said, "I realize the
alternative." She laughed a little, but did not reply.

"Seriously," he continued, "I know that in everything worth
accomplishing there is a lot of drudg