“Sutton, I want to present you to Miss Webling.”
Sutton realized his nakedness like another Adam, and his confusion confused Marie Louise. She nodded. He nodded. Perhaps he made his muscles a little tauter.
Davidge had planned to ask Sutton to let Marie Louise try to drive a rivet, just to show her how hopeless her ambition was, but he dared not loiter. Marie Louise, feeling silly in the silence, asked, stupidly:
“So that’s a riveter?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sutton confessed, “this is a riveter.”
“Oh!” said Marie Louise.
“Well, I guess we’ll move on,” said Davidge. As conversation, it was as unimportant as possible, but it had a negative historical value, since it left Marie Louise unconvinced of her inability to be a rivetress.
She said, “Thank you,” and moved on. Davidge followed. Sutton took up his work again, as a man does after a woman has passed by, pretending to be indignant, trying by an added ferocity to conceal his delight.
At a distance Davidge paused to say: “He’s a great card, Sutton. He gets a lot of money, but he earns it before he spends it, and he’s my ideal of a workman. His work comes first. He hogs all the pay the traffic will bear, but he goes on working and he takes a pride in being better than anybody else in his line. So many of these infernal laborers have only one ideal––to do the least possible work and earn enough to loaf most of the time.”