“And you haven’t had any trouble?” she interrogated, after the story was told.
“Not what you would call trouble; no. Of course, the railroad inspectors make life miserable for us when they can, but that is all in the day’s work. It amuses them and keeps them out of mischief, and it doesn’t hurt us.”
“Why should they make life miserable for you?”
“You ask me that?—and you the only daughter of the king of the contractors?” he laughed. “That is what they are hired for; to find fault, and to get us to give them something for nothing if they can.”
At this point it pleased Miss Virginia to play the part of the innocent and the uninformed.
“How should I know anything about it?” she queried. “Could you explain it so that a woman could understand?”
“I can explain it so that this one woman I’m talking to can understand. Have you ever happened to read a contract and specifications?”
“What a question!”
“I didn’t suppose you had. They are like the Congressional Record—nobody reads them unless it’s a necessity. But they are fearfully and wonderfully constructed. One of the clauses in the regulation form reads something like this: ‘The engineer of the party of the first part’—that’s the railroad company in the present instance—‘reserves the right to pass upon all work and material, and to reject either if found, in his judgment, to be unsatisfactory.’ Mark the wording and you’ll notice that it leaves an open door wide enough to drive a locomotive through. And up here we have a man against us who would like to hitch a whole train of cars to the locomotive.”
“Mr. Lushing, you mean?”