“Howd’ do, Walter!” said Paul, glancing up from a pile of blue-prints over which he had been straining his eyes in the fading evening light.
“Evening,” answered the boy, nodding and sitting down on the top step with one knee up. “D’you mind if I smoke, Mrs. Hollister?”
“Not at all,” she answered gravely, tickled by the elaborate carelessness with which he handled his new pipe.
“What you working on, Hollister?” he went on with the manner of one old business man to another.
Lydia hid a smile. She found him delicious. She began to think how she could make Dr. Melton laugh with her account of Walter the Man.
“The lay-out of the new power-house—Elliott-Gridley works in Urbana,” answered Paul, in a straightforward, reasonable tone, a little absent.
Lydia stopped smiling. It was a tone he had never used to answer any business question she had ever put to him. “I’m figuring on their generators,” he went on in explanation.
“Big contract?” asked Walter.
“Two thousand kilowatt turbo generator,” answered Paul.
The other whistled. “Whew! I didn’t know they had the cash!”