Before the sisters went to sleep that night Hope came to the door of her sister's room and watched Alice admiringly as she sat before the mirror brushing out her hair.
"I think it's going to be fine down here; don't you, Alice?" she asked. "Everything is so different from what it is at home, and so beautiful, and I like the men we've met. Isn't that Mr. MacWilliams funny—and he is so tough. And Captain Stuart—it is a pity he's shy. The only thing he seems to be able to talk about is Mr. Clay. He worships Mr. Clay!"
"Yes," assented her sister, "I noticed on the balcony that you seemed to have found some way to make him speak."
"Well, that was it. He likes to talk about Mr. Clay, and I wanted to listen. Oh! he is a fine man. He has done more exciting things—"
"Who? Captain Stuart?"
"No—Mr. Clay. He's been in three real wars and about a dozen little ones, and he's built thousands of miles of railroads, I don't know how many thousands, but Captain Stuart knows; and he built the highest bridge in Peru. It swings in the air across a chasm, and it rocks when the wind blows. And the German Emperor made him a Baron."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I couldn't understand. It was something about plans for fortifications. He, Mr. Clay, put up a fort in the harbor of Rio Janeiro during a revolution, and the officers on a German man-of-war saw it and copied the plans, and the Germans built one just like it, only larger, on the Baltic, and when the Emperor found out whose design it was, he sent Mr. Clay the order of something-or-other, and made him a Baron."
"Really," exclaimed the elder sister, "isn't he afraid that some one will marry him for his title?"
"Oh, well, you can laugh, but I think it's pretty fine, and so does Ted," added Hope, with the air of one who propounds a final argument.