“You have struck out on a new line, haven’t you?” she asked.
“I have been pushed out, in this Ocoee matter. There is enough of the elemental surviving in me to make me break with traditions and become a hustler when it is a question of bread and meat for my mother and sister. But apart from that, I suppose I am quite as hidebound as other men of my world.”
“And Mr. Carfax?” she queried. “Is he a slave to conventions, too?”
“Poictiers is a law unto himself in a good many ways; but on the whole, he’s tarred with the same stick. You will remark his regalia: I couldn’t have pulled him up here to-night with a three-inch hawser if he hadn’t happened to have evening clothes in his kit. And he has brought his man; a typical Cockney valet, knee-smalls, Oxford ties, and all.”
Miss Richardia’s quiet laugh fitted the incongruity. But when she spoke again it was of the business affair.
“You are at work on the Ocoee?” she inquired.
“Yes, indeed! I am going to make a spoon or spoil a perfectly good horn. You must all come over and see my test-drilling outfit when we get it going.”
“Is it your machine that we can see over beyond the glen? I wonder if you could make me understand what you are going to do?” she said, with interest real or so skilfully feigned that Tregarvon could not distinguish the difference.
He expressed himself as being very willing to try; did try at some considerable length. And Miss Birrell, notwithstanding an air of abstraction that seemed to come and go, appeared to grasp the mechanical details.
“You have no doubt that you will succeed? It will be fine to prove to everybody that all that was needed was for some one to come from the other world—your world—to show them how to do it.”