The architect noticed the "we" and sulked.
"I guess you'd better not try. He doesn't look like the kind you could fix. It's just as well that most of the work is done, for it seems to me he means trouble."
"All the finish and decoratin' is comin', ain't it?" the contractor growled. "I tell you what, if he holds up the mill work, and keeps fussin' round, there'll be more than one kind of trouble. I won't stand no nonsense from your damned trustees." He swore out his disgust and fumed, until Hart said:—
"Well, you'll have to do the best you can. And I'll try to keep the trustees quiet."
The Glenmore hotel was going up rapidly, and he thought of the twenty thousand dollars which would be coming to him on the completion of that building—if all went well. But if there should be a row, there would be no further profits for him on the hotel.
"The best I can!" Graves broke forth. "I guess you'll have to take care of them. You'd better see your cousin and get him to call this feller off, or there'll be trouble."
"I have seen Wheeler," the architect admitted.
"Well," the contractor blustered, "if they want a fight, let 'em come on. There'll be a strike on this building in twenty-four hours, I can tell you, and then it'll be years before they can get their school opened."
With this threat the contractor left the office, and Hart went over to the great building, which had become a thorn in his flesh these last weeks. It was not a bad piece of work, after all, as Chicago building was done, he reflected. Even if Graves had cut the work in places, and had made too much money on the steel, the stone, and here and there all over, the edifice would answer its purpose well enough, and the architect had no special interest in the everlasting qualities of his structures. Nothing was built to stand for more than a generation in this city. Life moved too swiftly for that.
For several weeks, as the end of August came near, there was a lull, while Pemberton was in the East on his vacation. The work on the school went forward as before; even the irritation of seeing Trimble's face was removed, for he had ceased to visit the works. Then, the first week in September, the storm burst. There came to the architect's office a peremptory summons to meet the trustees the next afternoon.