Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/407

 now," returned Sam, and if you don't haul down your colours, it must be because you have nailed them to the mast and are blind to reason. I may add, however, that the Viceroy of India sent a telegram to the President of the United States, to which he got a reply in seven hours and forty minutes, but the slowness of this message was accounted for by the fact of accidental and partly unavoidable delay in transmission both in Washington and London. At 1.30 of the 24th the traffic of the line became pressing, and all complimentary messages ceased with one from Bombay, which said, 'Sun just risen; delightfully cool; raining.

"Doesn't it seem as if the Baron Monkhausen's tales were possible after all?" remarked Mrs. Wright, looking as if her mind had got slightly confused.

"The Baron's tales are mere child's-play, mother," said Robin, "to the grand facts of electricity."

"That 's so, Robin," said Sam, still turning over the leaves of his note-book, "and we had some magnificent experiments or illustrations at the fête, which go far to prove the truth of your remark—experiments which were so beautiful that they would have made the eyes of Letta sparkle even more gorgeously than they are doing at present, if she had seen them."

Letta blushed, returned to self-consciousness for a moment, looked down, laughed, looked up as