een here ahead of me after all?"

"He's coming down-stairs now--ask him," smiled Balfe.

Welkie stepped into the veranda. "I was in my workroom when the buzzer
told me you had come in, Mr. Necker, but on the way down I couldn't help
looking in on young Greg. I'm glad to see you."

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Welkie. And to get right down to business,
I'm the new president of the Gulf Construction Company, and I want to
talk a few things over with you."

"Surely."

"Greg"--Balfe had opened the door--"how far up the beach to your cook's
shack?"

"Oh, for Marie? A hundred yards that side."

"I'll look in there. Good night, Mr. Necker."

"Don't hurry away on my account, Mr. Balfe. I'd like you, or any friend
of Mr. Welkie and his family, to hear what I have to say. It's a
straight open-and-shut proposition I've got."

"Then we'll try to be back to hear some of it. Good-by for a while,
then." The door closed behind him.

"Let's sit down, Mr. Necker."

"Thanks. And how did you leave that boy of yours?"

"In his little bed, with his pillow jammed up close to his
window-screen, singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' to himself and looking
out on the lights of the fleet. He's afraid they'll steam away before
he's seen his fill of them, and to-night he's not going to sleep till he
hears taps, he says."

"It must be a great thing to have a boy like him, and to plan for his
future and to look forward to what he'll be when he's grown up."

Welkie looked his interrogation.

"Surely, Welkie. A boy of brains he'll be. I don't have to look at a man
or a boy twice. Brains and will power. You could make a great career for
him, Welkie--a great engineer, say, if he was started right. But, of
course, you'll be in a position by and by to see that he gets the
start."

"Started right? What does he want when he has health and brains and a
heart?"

"All fine, but he'll need more than that these days."

"Are these days so different?"

"Different, man! Why, the older a country is, the more civilized it is,
the more education means, the more social position counts, the more
money counts."

"How much more?"

"A heap more. Listen. Your father on twenty-five hundred a year, say,
could put his children through college, couldn't he? On twenty-five
hundred a year to-day a man with a family has to battle to keep out of
the tenement districts. A dozen years from now, if you're getting no
more money than you're getting now, you'll be