There was a minute of silence. Then Marian's cheeks turned rather pink.
"I suppose not. But it is horridly tedious work, Sally Lou. On such a warm day, too."
"It certainly is." Sally Lou's voice was quite dry. She caught up Thomas Tucker, who was trying laboriously to feed Mr. Finnegan with a large ball of darning cotton. "You'd find it even more tedious if you were obliged to work at it evenings, as your brother does. Can't you stay to lunch, Marian? We'll love to have you; won't we, babies?"
"Thank you, no. Mrs. Gates will expect me at home."
Marian walked back through the woods, her head held high. The glint in Sally Lou's eyes had been a bit of a challenge. Again she felt her cheeks flush hot, with a queer puzzled vexation.
"I'll show her that I can straighten Rod's papers, no matter how muddled they are!" she said to herself, tartly. And all that warm spring afternoon she toiled with might and main.
Roderick, meanwhile, was spending a hard, discouraging day. Arriving at Saint Louis, he found the secretary of the coal-mining company at his office. Eager and insistent, he poured out his urgent need of the promised barge-load of coal. The consignment was now a week overdue. The dredges had only a few hundred bushels at hand; in less than forty-eight hours the engines must shut down, unless he could get the fuel to camp.
"You can't be any more disturbed by this crisis than I am, Mr. Hallowell," the secretary assured him. "Owing to a strike at the mines we have been forced to cancel all deliveries. I can't let you have a single ton."
Roderick gasped.
"But our dredges! We don't dare shut down. Our contract has a chilled-steel time-lock, sir, with a heavy forfeit. We must not run over our date limits. We've got to have that coal!"