"In what way ?" "You put in a drop or two that crystallized the whole solution," he answered.

She looked up at him inquiringly.
"Yes," he said, "I always knew that I should have to stop drifting some time, but there never seemed to be any particular time.

Some things you said to me set the time.

I am under 'full steam a-head' at present.
Behold in me," he exclaimed, touching his breast, "the future chief of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom you shall say some time in the next brief interval of forty years or so, 'I knew him as a young man, and one for whom no one would have predicted such eminence!' and perhaps you will add, 'It was largely owing to me.'" She looked at him with an expression in which amusement and curiosity were blended.
"I congratulate you," she said, laughing, "upon the career in which it appears I had the honor to start you.

Am I being told that you have taken up the law ?" "Not quite the whole of it as yet," he said; "but when I am not doing errands for the office I am to some extent taken up with it," and then he told her of his talk with his father and what had followed.