"Did you send him round to our office?" Porter asked jokingly.
Sommers's keen eyes rested on his host's face inquiringly.
"No-oh," Alexander Hitchcock drawled; "I had a talk with him."
"They are rather dangerous people to talk with," Dr. Lindsay remarked.
"He was a Norwegian, a big, fine-looking man. He was all right. He couldn't talk much English, but he knew that his folks were hungry. 'You gif me a yob,' he kept saying, until I explained I wasn't in the business, had nothing to do with the Pullman works. Then he sat down and looked at the floor. 'I vas fooled.' Well, it seems he did inlaying work, fine cabinet work, and got good pay. He built a house for himself out in some place, and he was fired among the first last winter,—I guess because he didn't live in Pullman."
"That's the story they use," Brome Porter said sceptically. "You should call the watchman; they're apt to be dangerous."
"A crowd of 'em," put in Carson, "were at the Pullman office this morning; wanted to arbitrate."
He spoke deprecatingly of their innocence, but Porter's tones were harsh.
"To arbitrate! to arbitrate! when we are making money by having 'em quit."
Miss Hitchcock turned apprehensively to her companion. Her handsome, clear face was perplexed; she was distressed over the way the talk was going.