“Yes, I see,” observed Sprague thoughtfully. And when the train began to move onward: “With this big reservoir behind you, I suppose a sudden flood couldn’t hurt you, Mr. Smith?”
The young man with the healthy tan on his clean-cut face promptly showed his good business sense.
“We think we have a comfortably safe installation, but we are not specially anxious to try it out merely for the satisfaction of seeing how much it would stand,” was the conservative reply.
Sprague looked up curiously from his solid planting in the biggest of the platform folding-chairs.
“And yet, three days ago, Mr. Smith, you said, in the presence of witnesses, that a ten-foot rise wouldn’t endanger your dam or your power plant,” he put in shrewdly.
Mr. J. Montague Smith, secretary and treasurer of the Timanyoni High Line Company, was plainly taken unawares.
“How the dev—” he began; and then he tried again. “Pardon me, Mr. Sprague; you hit me when I wasn’t looking for it. I believe I did say something like that; in fact, I’ve said similar things a good many times.”
“But not in exact feet and inches, I hope,” said Sprague, with a show of mild concern. “These exactnesses are what murder us, Mr. Smith. Now, I presume if somebody should come to you to-day and threaten to turn another ten feet of river on you, you’d object, wouldn’t you?”
“We certainly should—object most strenuously!”
“Yet, if that person were so minded, he might quote you as having said that ten additional feet wouldn’t hurt you.”