"Oh, I have, too! Spence put me onto it. They're no good now, but you bet your life they will be! And I'm going to stick along at the foundry until the old man wakes up some day, and realizes that I'm getting more out of my men than any other two foremen in the place. Those boys would do anything for me--"
"Because you're a very unusual type of man to be in that sort of place, Bill!" Susan interrupted.
"Shucks," he said, in embarrassment. "Well," he resumed, "then some day I'm going to the old man and ask him for a year's leave. Then I'll visit every big iron-works in the East, and when I come back, I'll take a job of casting from my own blue-prints, at not less than a hundred a week. Then I'll run up some flats in the Panhandle--"
"Having married the beautiful daughter of the old man himself--" Susan interposed. "And won first prize in the Louisiana lottery--"
"Sure," he said gravely. "And meanwhile," he added, with a business-like look, "Coleman has got a crush on you, Sue. It'd be a dandy marriage for you, and don't you forget it!"
"Well, of all nerve!" Susan said unaffectedly, and with flaming cheeks. "There is a little motto, to every nation dear, in English it's forget-me-not, in French it's mind your own business, Bill!"
"Well, that may be," he said doggedly, "but you know as well as I do that it's up to you--"
"Suppose it is," Susan said, satisfied that he should think so. "That doesn't give YOU any right to interfere with my affairs!"
"You're just like Georgie and Mary Lou," he told her, "always bluffing yourself. But you've got more brains than they have, Sue, and it'd give the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a marriage like that. Don't think I'm trying to butt in," he gave her his winning, apologetic smile, "you know I'm as interested as your own brother could be, Sue! If you like him, don't keep the matter hanging fire. There's no question that he's crazy about you--everybody knows that!"
"No, there's no question about THAT," Susan said, softly.