“I must say, Griggs,” rejoined the inventor, sourly, “that you have very little comprehension of the advertising value of a good name. Who under the sun would ever remember the 'Hawkins Gasolene Washing Machine,' if they saw it in a magazine? But—'The Gasowashine'!”
“So it's a washing machine?”
“Of course. It's the one perfect contrivance for washing and drying dishes; and let me tell you the basic principle of that machine breathes genius, if I do say it. Why, Griggs, just think! You can pile in three or four hundred dishes, simply start the motor, and then sit down while the clean, dry dishes are piled neatly on the table.”
“And they're really using it here? It—it works?” I asked, wonderingly.
“Well, they're going to use it,” said Hawkins, rising. “I have consented to allow them to try my model. It arrived here just before we did.”
“Hawkins, have we been sitting right over that thing all this time?”
“Don't try to be comic, Griggs,” said the inventor, bruskly. “I'm going down to see who's fooling with that motor. It should not have been touched, although I must say it's a satisfaction to sit in a first-class place like this and hear my own machinery running. Are you coming?”
I will admit that I was curious about the contrivance. I followed Hawkins through the crowded dining-room to a door in the back.
Then, dodging a dozen hurrying waiters, we made our way down an incline into the kitchen and through that apartment, past steam tables and ranges and pots and kettles and other paraphernalia of the cuisine.
At the farther end of the room stood a massive affair of oak. It looked, as nearly as it resembled any other thing on earth, like a piano box; but on each side, near the top, was a huge fly-wheel, the two being apparently fastened to the ends of an axle.