“A girl of the Roies,” answered Myles. “That is what the fighting was about.”
“Not for mine!” the soldier asserted, grimacing. “Though there is no accounting for tastes. They are filthy little beasts, and spitfires as well, so I’m told. My advice to you, sir, is to throw it down a well.”
Quivven wriggled protestingly.
“Perhaps I will,” Myles laughed.
At their own gate at last, he placed her once more on her feet, whereat she shook herself free, raced into the house, slammed the door of her room.
Cabot himself went right to bed, without waiting to wash or anything, and dropped instantly to sleep the moment he touched his pile of bedding; yet, so intent was he on wasting no time in getting Cupia on the air that he was up early the next morning.
He found his laboratory force sadly demoralized, owing to the absence of Quivven and himself, but he quickly brought order out of chaos, and set the men to work on their first real construction job, to which all the other work had been mere preliminary steps.
Quivven kept to her rooms, but one of the other maids roguishly informed him: “The Golden One says she hates you.”
Now that his fire-bricks were ready, Myles Cabot laid out on paper the plans for his smelting plant, all the units of which were to be lined with fire-brick.
First he designed a furnace for roasting his ore. This furnace was to be in two sections, one above the other, the lower holding the charcoal fire, and the upper holding the ore. Later he planned to use the sulphur fumes of this roaster to make sulphuric acid, which in turn he would use to make sal ammoniac for his batteries. But at present he had not yet figured out this process in detail.