"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your marriage, Edward. I was not consulted. It is no affair of mine."
"Of course, you don't mean it," I said. "That remark is silly enough to have been made by me." I was quite appalled at my boldness, but anger was fast mastering me.
"I do not wish to have any further discussion with you on this subject, either now or in the future. Whatever else you learned in Deep Harbor, it wasn't manners."
"Rot!" I exclaimed. She lifted her eyebrows and turned a page. I stood a second irresolute. "I mean I didn't intend to be rude—you know what I mean—only you won't admit it."
"I don't expect an apology. Good night, Edward."
"Now you've done it, you blithering idiot," I said as I clumped upstairs to Helen. "I knew I'd end in the wrong." Helen gently told me, at the conclusion of my story, words to the same effect.
"Am I a blithering idiot, Helen dear?"
"No, sweetheart, you are just a boy," was Helen's exit line for this episode.
Our second Christmas together was drawing near, and it promised to be far different from the one we had looked forward to the year before. The factory problem was still unsolved; the building which my father had anticipated would be humming with prosperous activity stood silent. Only in the laboratory upstairs was there any work being done, labour which still seemed but a beating of the air. I had called in more than one consulting chemist; they merely suggested that I do the things I had been doing. The advice from Germany was to the same effect. Analyze and search for the cause among the raw materials. I had outside analyses made on these, to check my own by, and no clue developed. The board of directors called upon me collectively and singly to offer the inane suggestions which non-technical men always make when they wish to be helpful over a technical matter.