Evidently his had not been a life of leisure.  As he lounged easily upon the edge of the berth, Hugh could not but admire his long, straight figure, the broad shoulders and the pale face with its tense earnestness.

“Manila, you know, is an important post these days,” said Veath.  “There’s a lot of work to be done there in the next few years.  I’m from Indiana.  Every able-bodied man in our district who voted right and hasn’t anything else to do wants a government job.  Of course, most of them want to be consul-generals, postmasters, or heads of bureaus, but there are some of us who will take the best thing that is offered.  That’s why I am going to Manila.  Politics, you know, and my uncle’s influence with the administration.”  Ridgeway observed that wine made loquacious a man who was naturally conservative.  “Where are you going?” he continued.

“We are going to Manila.”

“What!” gasped Veath.  “You don’t mean it!”

“Certainly.  Why not?” and Hugh smiled delightedly over the sensation he had created.

“Why—­why, it seems improbable,” stammered Veath.  “I had looked upon Manila as the most wretched hole in the world, and yet I find you going there, evidently from choice.”

“Well, you’ll have to change your opinion now,” said Hugh.

“I do—­forthwith.  It cannot be such a bad place or you wouldn’t be taking your sister there.  May I ask what is your object in going to Manila?”

Hugh turned red in the face and stooped over to flick an imaginary particle of dust from his trousers’ leg.  There was but one object in their going and he had not dreamed of being asked what it was.  He could not be employed forever in brushing away that speck, and yet he could not, to save his life, construct an answer to Veath’s question.  In the midst of his despair a sudden resolution came, and he looked up, his lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

“We are going as missionaries.”

He almost laughed aloud at the expression on Veath’s face.  It revealed the utmost dismay.  There was a moment’s silence, and then the man in the berth said slowly: 

“Is Miss Ridge a—­a missionary also?”

“The very worst kind,” replied Hugh cheerily.

“Going out among the natives, I suppose?”

“What natives?”

“Why,—­the Igorrotes, or whatever they are, of course.”

“Oh, of course—­to be sure,” cried Hugh hastily.  “I am so d—­d absent-minded.”

Veath stared in amazement.

“You must not think it strange that I swear,” said Hugh, mopping his brow.  “I am not the missionary, you know.”

“Oh,” was the other’s simple exclamation.  Another pause and then, “You don’t mean to say that such a beautiful woman is going to waste her life among savages?”

“She’s got her head set on it and we think the only way to break her of it is to give her a sample of the work.  I am going with her ostensibly to protect, but really to make her life miserable.”