She looked about the office—at his desk and through the open door into the busy outer room. "Are you quite sure that you have time for me?"
"Surest thing in the world," he returned, with a reassuring smile. Then to a man who at that moment appeared in the doorway, "All right, Tom." And to Helen, "Excuse me just a second, dear."
She watched him curiously as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and clear-cut instructions accompanied the examination.
Helen had never before been inside the doors of the industrial plant to which her father had literally given his life. In those old-house days, when Adam worked with Pete and the Interpreter, she had gone sometimes to the outer gate to meet her father when his day's work was done. On rare occasions her automobile had stopped in front of the office. That was all.
In a vague, indefinite way the young woman realized that her education, her pleasures, the dresses she wore, her home on the hill, everything that she had, in fact, came to her somehow from those great dingy, unsightly buildings. She knew that people who were not of her world worked there for her father. Sometimes there were accidents—men were killed. There had been strikes that annoyed her father. But no part of it all had ever actually touched her. She accepted it as a matter of course—without a thought—as she accepted all of the established facts in nature. The Mill existed for her as the sun existed. It never occurred to her to ask why. There was for her no personal note in the droning, moaning voice of its industry. There was nothing of personal significance in the forest of tall stacks with their overhanging cloud of smoke. Indeed, there had been, rather, something sinister and forbidding about the place. The threatening aspect of the present industrial situation was in no way personal to her except, perhaps, as it excited her father and disturbed John.
"You've got it all there, Tom," said the manager, finishing his examination of the papers. "Good work, too. Baird will have those specifications on that Miller and Wilson job in to-morrow, will he?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good, that's the stuff!"
The man was smiling as he moved toward the door.
"Oh, Tom, just a moment."