I must not delay even to inform you of the ways in which it was discovered that Billy could do all sorts of things; that there was no blue-print through which his keen eye could not see, and no engineering error—like that in the Polyphase Generator—that he couldn't detect; or how he was pushed up and up by force of sheer genius, no one knowing who he was until he found himself, like an eagle among buzzards, at the head of a department, and coming into the office to see Pa quite in a legitimate way.
"Hooray! Hooray!" came from behind the tree.
"Shut up, Poet!" commanded the Artist, "or I'll come back there!"
I didn't know these things personally, because I had left the office. I had found out that there seemed to be more soul-nurture in artistic metal work than in typewriting, and had fitted up a shop in the Fine Arts Building, where Louise Amerland and I were doing perfectly enchanting stunts in hammered brass and copper—old Roman lamps and Persian lanterns, after designs we made ourselves. Pa parted with his secretary with a sigh, the nature of which may be a question better left unsettled.
This romance really begins with my visit, after months and months of absence, to the restaurant which I had dinged at Pa until he had instituted for the help. I told him that the social side of labor was neglected shamefully, and for the work people to eat at the same table with their superintendents and employers would be just too dear and democratic, and he finally yielded growlingly. He was awfully pleased afterward when the papers began to write the thing up. He said it was the cheapest advertising he ever got, and patted me on the shoulder and asked me if I wasn't ashamed to be so neglectful of my great invention. So one day I got tired of working out Rubáiyát motifs in brass, and I went over to the café for luncheon, incog. And what do you think? Billy came in and sat down very informally right across from me!
"Hello!" said he, putting out his hand. "I've been looking for you for eons, to—to thank you, you know. Don't you remember me?"
Before I knew it I had blushingly given him my hand for a moment.
"Yes," I replied, taking it away, and assuming a more properly dignified air. "I hope you have risen above seven a week and a broom; and I am glad to see that your head has healed up."
"Thank you," he replied. "I am running the installation department of the dynamo end of the business. And you? I'm no end glad to see you back. Did you get canned for letting me in? I've had a good many bad half-hours since I found you gone, thinking of you out hunting a job on—on my account. You—pardon me—don't look like a girl who would have the E. M. F. in the nerve-department to go out and compete, you know."
I was amazed at the creature's effrontery, at first; and then the whole situation cleared up in my mind. I saw that I had an admirer (that was plain) who didn't know me as Rollin Blunt's heiress at all, but only as a shop-mate in the Mid-Continent Electric Company's factory—a stenographer who had done him a favor. It was more fun than most girls might think.