“I should think you might come and say 'Good morning' to me, Mr. Winton. I'm not Uncle Somerville,” said Miss Carteret.
Winton said “Good morning,” not too graciously, and Adams mocked him.
“Besides being a bear with a sore head, Miss Carteret thinks you're not much of a hustler, Jack,” he said coolly. “She knows the situation; knows that you were stupid enough to promise not to lay hands on the car when we could have pushed it out of the way without annoying anybody. None the less, she thinks that you might find a way to go on building your railroad without breaking your word to Mr. Darrah.”
Winton put his sore-heartedness far enough behind him to smile and say: “Perhaps Miss Virginia will be good enough to tell me how.”
“I don't know how,” she rejoined quickly. “And you'd only laugh at me if I should tell you what I thought of.”
“You might try it and see,” he ventured. “I'm desperate enough to take suggestions from anyone.”
“Tell me something first: is your railroad obliged to run straight along in the middle of this nice little ridge you've been making for it?”
“Why—no; temporarily, it can run anywhere. But the problem is to get the track laid beyond this crossing before your uncle gets back with a trainload of armed guards.”
“Any kind of track would do, wouldn't it?—just to secure the crossing?”
“Certainly; anything that would hold the weight of the octopod. We shall have to rebuild most of the line, anyway, as soon as the frost comes out of the ground in the spring.”