"Trouble?" Richard Procter's head went up.
"Yes, the men are dissatisfied, surly. It's the one department where your touch hasn't been felt. I want you to go there on Monday and begin your work."
"I'll be ready," said Richard Procter. Strength and purpose seemed to flow back to him.
The Eagle Man turned as though to go, but he paused at the door to look again at Suzanna.
"And so your father's been telling you that he has failed, that his machine refused to work in the final test we gave it at the mills."
"My father hasn't failed," Suzanna said proudly.
"No, he hasn't failed," the Eagle Man agreed. "He hasn't failed. He's the most brilliant success I know. He built into a piece of machinery his ideals, and when the machine was finished he saw in his experiments with it on those in his home ultimate triumph. But when it was taken to my mills the machine failed to register color in personalities whose chief talent by years of wrong work had been nearly strangled."
Mr. Procter spoke: "It shouldn't have failed even there. It did register, if you remember your color and Mr. Bartlett's, and both of you had pulled far away from your purpose."
"Yes, for some reason, it did register us," agreed the Eagle Man. He paused, and then his voice rang out. "Let me tell you all something that the inventor of that machine did, some miracle he brought to pass I should have thought impossible. He awakened old ideals in a hard old breast, he made hard old eyes see in men, not automatons born only to add to his wealth, but human beings to be rendered happy in their work."
"Was yours the hard old breast, Eagle Man?" Suzanna asked.