uences, and you must take a dose of my
elixir. Helen, dear, you know where to find the bottle."

Julius Savine was guilty of a slight gesture of impatience. His
brother laughed, while Helen seemed anxious to slip away. Geoffrey
answered:

"I hardly think one should get very mentally excited over a bicycle. I
feel perfectly well, and only somewhat greasy."

"That is just one of the symptoms. Yes, you have hit it--greasy
feeling!" broke in the amateur dispenser, who rarely relaxed her
efforts until she had run down her victim. "Helen, why don't you hunt
round for that bottle?"

"I mean greasy externally," explained Geoffrey in desperation, and
again Thomas Savine chuckled, while Helen, who ground one little
boot-heel into the grasses, deliberately turned away. Mrs. Savine,
however, cheerfully departed to find the bottle, and soon returned with
it and a wine glass. She filled the glass with an inky fluid which
smelt unpleasant, and said to Geoffrey:

"You will be distinctly better the moment you have taken this!"

Geoffrey took the goblet, walked apart a few paces, and, making a wry
face, heroically swallowed the bitter draught, after which Mrs. Savine,
who beamed upon him, said:

"You feel quite differently, don't you?"

"Yes!" asserted Geoffrey, truthfully, longing to add that he had felt
perfectly well before and had now to make violent efforts to overcome
his nausea.

His heroism had its reward, however, for when Helen returned from her
wheel ride, she said: "I was really ashamed when my aunt insisted on
doctoring you, but you must take it as a compliment, because she only
prescribes for the people she takes a fancy to. I hope the dose was
not particularly nasty?"

"Sorry for you, Thurston, from experience!" cried Thomas Savine. "When
I see that bottle, I just vacate the locality. The taste isn't the
worst of it by a long way."

That night Julius Savine called Geoffrey into his study, and, spreading
a roll of plans before him, offered terms, which were gladly accepted,
for the construction of portions of several works. Savine said: "I
won't worry much about references. Your work speaks for itself, and
the Roads and Trails surveyor has been talking about you. I'll take
you, as you'll have to take me, on trust. I keep my eye on rising
young men, and I have been watching you. Besides, the man who could
master an obstinate bicycle the first time he wrestled with one must
have some sense of hi