“Carroll's going to explain me in six paragraphs to-morrow.”
“Carroll doesn't amount to anything. Did you know Hicks at all?” implying that he knew what the paragraphs would be.
“Never saw him that I know of.”
“Well—I don't see where you're concerned.”
Hennion went out into the street among his workmen. He wondered what Aidee meant by “adopting your scruples.” Probably Aidee saw the enormity of dragging in Camilla. It was time he did. Hennion did not find himself liking Aidee any better for his candour, or advice, or conscientious scruples, if he had them. He thought his own scruples about Camilla were not things to be copied or “adopted” precisely by anyone else.
Aidee went back by the schoolhouse. He thought he would like to hear the bluebird again, on the spot where his bitterness and the wound within him had been suddenly-healed by some medicine as irrational as the disease, but the twilight had fallen now, and there was no song about the place. Mrs. Finney and her “man” were quarrelling noisily at their open window.
CHAPTER VIII—MECHANICS
HENNION came back from seeing Wood laid away (where other men were lying, who had been spoken of in their day, whom Port Argent had forgotten or was in process of forgetting) and saw the last bricks laid and rammed on Lower Bank Street. There was satisfaction in the pavement of Lower Bank Street, in knowing what was in it and why. The qualities of sand, crushed stone, and paving brick were the same yesterday and to-day. Each brick was three inches and three-eighths thick, and not one would be ambitious of four inches to-morrow. If it were broken, and thrown away, there would be no altruistic compunctions. One built effectively with such things.