“What do you want, anyhow?” Bill demanded, swinging round and facing the delegate.
The latter looked at him coolly and exasperatingly for a moment, then said: “What position do you occupy here, my man?”
Dick whirled as if he had been struck from behind.
“What position does he occupy? He is my superintendent, and my friend. Anything he objects to, or sanctions, I object to, or agree with. 175 Anything he says, I’ll back up. Now I’ll let him do the talking.”
The delegate calmly flicked the ash from a cigar he had lighted, puffed at it, blew the smoke from under his mustache toward the ceiling, and looked at the thin cloud before answering. It was as if he had come intent on creating a disturbance through studied insolence.
“Well,” he said, without noticing the hot, antagonistic attitude of the mine owner, “what do you think of the proffered agreement?”
“I think it’s no good!” answered Mathews, facing him. “It’s drawn up on a number-one scale. This mine ain’t in that class.”
“Oh! So you’ve signed ’em before.”
“I have. A dozen times. This mine has but one shift––the regular day shift. It has but one engineer and a helper. It has but one mill boss.”
“Working eight batteries?”