"Are you so much more tired than Dale?" she asked sweetly.
"Certainly not," he flushed.
He pushed himself slowly out of the chair and went to the French window.
"Where are you?" he began asking before stepping through. "I want some encouragment to climb those stairs!"
She was sitting, balanced lightly on the library table, with her hands clasped about one knee.
"What an old man you've suddenly become," she laughed.
"You'd be an old man, too," he said, "if you'd been paced all day by a camel!"
"I thought engineers were inured to those things;—I thought they could withstand all manner of hardships;—that, really, the elements themselves were playthings in their hands!"
He leaned against the table and looked down at her. That toddy, put into his tired and empty frame, was gripping him with surprising activity.
"No," he slowly replied. "Engineers can't master all the elements;—at least, I know one who can't. I wish he could!"