Marie Louise thought of some of Jake Nuddle’s principles and wondered if she had done right in recommending him for a place on Davidge’s pay-roll. She was afraid he would be a slacker, never dreaming that he would be industrious in all forms of destruction. Jake never demanded short hours for his conspiracies.
At the top of the unfinished deck Marie Louise forgot Jake and gave her mind up to admiring Davidge as the father of all this factory. He led her down, out and along the bottom-land, through bogs, among heaps of rusty iron, to a concrete building-slip. He seemed to be very important about something, but she could not imagine what it was. She saw nothing but a long girder made up of sections. It lay along a flat sheet of perforated steel––the homeliest contraption imaginable.
“Whatever is all this,” she asked,––“the beginning of a bridge?”
“Yes and no. It’s the beginning of part of the bridge we’re building across the Atlantic.”
“I don’t believe that I quite follow you.”
“This is the keel of a ship.”
“No!”
“Yep!”
“And was the Clara like this once?”