"Machines!" Rupert urged again.
"Come on, then," said Edwin going out with assumed briskness and gaiety.
At the door stood Tertius Ingpen, preoccupied and alert, with all the mien of a factory inspector in full activity.
"Don't mind me," said Ingpen, "I can look after myself. In fact I prefer to."
At the sight of an important stranger speaking familiarly to Uncle Edwin, all the children save Rupert grew stiff, dismal and apprehensive, and Clara looked about as though she had suddenly discovered very interesting phenomena in the corners of the workshop.
"My sister, Mrs. Benbow--Mr. Ingpen. Mr. Ingpen is Her Majesty's Inspector of Factories, so we must mind what we're about," said Edwin.
Clara gave a bright, quick smile as she limply shook hands. The sinister enchantment which precedes social introduction was broken. And Clara, overcome by the extraordinary chivalry and deference of Ingpen's customary greeting to women, decided that he was a particularly polite man; but she reserved her general judgment on him, having several times heard Albert inveigh against the autocratic unreasonableness of this very inspector, who, according to Albert, forgot that even an employer had to live, and that that which handicapped the employer could not possibly help the workman--"in the long run."
"Machines!" Rupert insisted.
They all laughed; the other children laughed suddenly and imitatively, and an instant later than the elders; and Tertius Ingpen, as he grasped the full purport of the remark, laughed more than anyone. He turned sideways and bent slightly in order to give vent to his laughter, which, at first noiseless and imprisoned, gradually grew loud in freedom. When he had recovered, he said thoughtfully, stroking his soft beard:
"Now it would be very interesting to know exactly what that child understands by 'machines'--what his mental picture of them is. Very interesting! Has he ever seen any?"