“Well”—­Jeff did his best to speak coolly, as if the matter were really of no great importance, after all—­“you know it’s been a question with me all along as to just what I was going to do when I got out of college.  I wanted tremendously to get to work, and a lot of the usual things didn’t seem to appeal to me at all.  I haven’t enough of a scientific turn to go into any of the engineering courses.  I didn’t care for a mercantile berth.  In fact, while my brother Lanse has had his future cut out for him since he was fourteen, and Just, at sixteen, is body and soul in for electrical engineering, I’ve been the family problem.  Father’s had the sense not to assert his wishes for a moment.  He saw from the start, I suppose, that the family traditions were not for me—­I could never begin by studying law and end by wearing the ermine, as a lot of my grandfathers and uncles have done.  So—­”

Jeff paused and drew a long breath.  He had been looking off down the river as he talked, but now he brought his eyes back to Evelyn’s face, and his spirits leaped exultantly as he saw with what eager attention she was listening.

“You really care to hear all this, don’t you?” he asked, happily, and went on before she could do more than nod.  “Well, the short of it is that through Doctor Forester I got to know a friend of his who is a railroad magnate—­the real thing—­and to please the doctor he seemed to take an interest in me.  He’s offered me a position in one of his offices, provided I take a year to study practical railroading first.  Of course I’m only too glad to do that.  And now I’m coming to the point of the whole thing.  When my year is up, that office where I’m to begin to work up in the railroad business is”—­he paused dramatically, watching his hearer’s face, as his own, in spite of himself, broke into a smile—­“in your own city, Evelyn Lee!”

If he had had any lingering doubt that this might not be as good news to Evelyn as he wanted it to be, his fears were put to rout.

“O Jeff!” she said, quite breathlessly, and the happy colour surged into her face.  “Why, that’s almost too good to be true!”

“Is it?  You’re a trump for saying so.  Jupiter!  I feel like standing up and shouting.  The thing has been sure since that afternoon I went to Weston, but I didn’t mean to tell you of it in this crazy boy fashion, but write it to you quite calmly after you got home.  But—­it wouldn’t keep.”

“I shouldn’t think it would.  Besides, it’s so much nicer to hear it now, when it makes it——­”

She stopped abruptly, and jumped up.  Jeff leaped to his feet also.

“Makes it—­what?” he asked, eagerly.

“Why—­it’s such a pleasant place to hear good news in.”

“That wasn’t what you were going to say.”

“We ought to go back to the house.”  She began to move slowly away.  Jeff followed.

“I’d like to hear the end of that sentence,” he urged, as they walked up the grassy slope to the house in the clear sunlight.