“I believe the boy has got it!”
“Looks like that,” Wheeler agreed with a chuckle. “The proposition beat our gang.”
“But how do you account for a raw lad’s——?”
“The boy was a shipbuilder and I figured on the Jasper Carson touch. We take a kid from a farm and send him to the machine shops; another from a backwoods store goes to an engineering college. In the Old Country they have folks whose grandfathers handled machine tools. Carson belongs to a lot like that; I guess you can hand him the job.”
After a time they sent for Kit and the manager said: “We’ll try out your plan and you can start on your calculations. As soon as the plates are rolled, we’ll give you a picked gang and you’ll begin the first tank on the division west of Harper’s. If your tank is tight, you can build the lot and I reckon we can satisfy you about your pay. In the meantime, we’ll raise you fifty per cent.”
“If the tank is not tight, you can look for another job,” Wheeler added.
“Thank you,” said Kit. “The test is pretty stern, but I admit it’s logical. I must try to make good.”
They let him go and when he returned to his drawing board he thrilled triumphantly. If his tanks carried their load, promotion would be swift and for a shipbuilder to put up the tanks was not really hard. He pictured the letter he would write to Evelyn, but when after supper he went to his room at the boarding-house he hesitated and lighted his pipe. To boast was risky; he had boasted at the bridge. The tanks were not yet built, and one must reckon on obstacles. Sometimes thin steel got brittle around the rivet holes; sometimes the rivets did not properly pull up the seam. Workmen were careless, and so forth.
Moreover, Kit began to feel he was not really keen to write. He had not for some time received a letter from Evelyn, and the last was cold and vaguely resentful. Perhaps she had reason to be disappointed and Kit was sorry, but her grumbling jarred. Anyhow, the thrill was gone. At length, he was going ahead, but his start was late and the proper time to celebrate his triumph was when he arrived. The strange thing was, on the whole he was resigned to wait.
Kit put up his writing pad and got his violin. For half an hour he played merry tunes in the dining-room; and then he and another went up town for a game of pool.