"By the way, this child--Corinne Garland, her name is--is an operative in your father's factory, Miss Heth. She's been there over two years."
Cally's head turned. For the first time she looked fully at the Cooneys' poorhouse idol. And now she remembered that she had an annihilative weapon against him.... Had he led up to this subject on purpose?
"Oh!... She works at my father's factory?"
The young man's look was plainly not controversial; no, it was as if he were pleased that at last they had tapped a vein of common interest. In one glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously made for a much stouter person. She saw that the man looked absurdly out of place here, at his own uncle's. Against this background of gaiety and glitter, of music, powder and décolleté gowns, he really looked quite like a stray from some other world: only the more so in that he himself appeared quite unconscious of any alienship.
Well, then, let him keep to his own world. That, in fact, was precisely what she desired of him....
"Yes, a buncher there, as they're called," he was quaintly explaining--"quite the best one in the shop, I'm told, though she's only eighteen years old. She has a record of 6,500 cheroots in one day--"
"But she has been taken sick at it, you say?"
"Undoubtedly she has a temperature to-night," said he, in an intent sort of way, desirous of giving his information accurately. "I didn't stop to take it,' as perhaps I should have done--"
"And she caught her fever at the Works, you think?"
"Oh!... Well, of course I shouldn't say that. You know--"