Ned started to his feet.
"A rise of three feet! What is the man talking about? Don't you believe one word, Sally Lou. That inspector is a regular hoot-owl. He'd rather gloom and forebode than breathe. But maybe I'd better go and tell Hallowell. Perhaps we can ginger up our excavation. Yet the men and the machines are working up to their limit."
He shuffled into his wet oilskins once more.
"Where is Roderick, Ned?"
"He just came in off his watch. He's sound asleep in the hammock over at his shack. Marian is over there too. She made Mr. Gates bring her down at five this morning, and she has worked like a Turk every minute. She spent the morning with Hallowell, up the laterals. She has learned to run his launch better that he can, so he lets her manage the boat for him. Then she takes all his notes, and does all his telephoning, and passes along his orders to the commissary men, and seconds him at every turn. Did you ever in all your life see anybody change as she has done? When I remember the listless, useless, fretful specimen that she was, those first weeks, then look at her now, I can hardly believe my eyes."
Sally Lou listened a little impatiently.
"Yes, I know. Ned, please go and tell Roderick about the inspector's message. He surely ought to know."
"All right, I'm going." Ned put down his frolicking small sons reluctantly. Sally Lou laughed at his unwilling face. Yet she looked after him anxiously as he sauntered away. Then her eyes turned to the brimming canal. Tree branches and bits of lumber, washed down from the upper land by the heavy storm, rolled and tumbled past. The sky was thick and gray, the wind blew straight from the east.
"I hate to fidget and forebode. But I—I almost wish that I could make Ned forebode a little. I'm afraid he ought to worry. And Roderick ought to be a little anxious, too."
Suddenly the telephone bell rang. Sally Lou sprang to answer it.