My love to Norway, he would say, as they passed. And in the
autumn to see them return, grey goose, starling, wagtail, and all the
rest. "How goes it now at home?" he would think--and "Next time I'll go
with you," he would promise himself year after year.
"And here I am at last! Skaal!"
"Welcome home," said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.
He rang the bell. "What do you want?" her eyes asked.
"Champagne," said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.
"Are you crazy, Peer?"
He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of
his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at
the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English
firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: "Now,
gentlemen, here's a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win
his spurs--who's ready?" And half a score of voices answered "I." "Well,
here's the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion
and have a railway--couple of hundred miles of it--what do you say to
that?" "Splendid," we cried in chorus. "Well, but we've got to compete
with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans--and we've got to win." "Of
course"--a louder chorus still. "Now, I'm going to take two men and give
them a free hand. They'll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and
work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and
the financial side--and a project that's better and cheaper than the
opposition ones.
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