“Hello, Mr. Nevin! What's the trouble now that your great experts can't locate?”
“No trouble this time. Pleasure! Bill, do you live or do you board?”
“I believe I board.”
“Any room at the house for a friend of mine?”
“I don't know. Mrs. Clayton's rather particular.”
“She must be,” said Nevin. “Bill, shake hands with Mr. Leigh.”
Tommy extended his hand. Bill looked at him, at the “swell clothes” and the New York look and the dean hands, and held up his own grease-smeared hands and shook his head.
Tommy was confronted by his first crisis in Dayton in the shape of a reluctant hand. Grease stood between him and friendship. By rights his own hand ought to be oily and black. He was not conscious of the motives for his own decision, but he stepped to a machine near by, grasped an oily shaft with his right hand, and then held it, black and grease and all, before Bill. Mr. Nevin laughed. Bill frowned. Tommy was serious. Bill looked at Tommy. Then Bill shook hands.
“If you don't mind I'd like to walk home with you to-night. I'll see Mrs. Clayton and ask if she won't take me,” said Tommy.
Bill was a little taller than Tommy and slender, with clean-cut features, dark hair, very clear blue eyes, and that air of decision that men have when they know what they know. He hesitated as he took in Tommy's clothes and manner. He looked Tommy full in the face. Then he said, positively: