“I fancy,” the older woman was cordially approving, “you do not waste many moments yourself.”
“Well, I work as hard as I can, but Luke doesn’t let me help him as much as I wish he would.”
“I always consider,” said Mrs. Parker firmly, not to be lured into commendation of a person she disliked as much as she did the splendid-looking, saturnine superintendent, “that the test of a good executive is his ability to surround himself with capable assistants, and then delegate a reasonable amount of work and responsibility to them. When people lose poise and become irritable——”
“Oh, but he doesn’t, ordinarily!” Glen insisted quickly. “I have never seen him like this before. Why, he had no intention of running the mill to-night, when I saw him, early this evening—he must simply have worried and worried about it until he couldn’t bear the inaction. He had to be doing something, even though he’d decided we were too short handed to run night shifts at present.” She looked earnestly into the other’s face, expecting understanding.
“Some one, Masefield, I believe,” said Mrs. Parker rather grudgingly, “has said that ‘energy is agony expelled.’ Ah—” she had looked over her shoulder at a sound—“there is Peter now, with Nancy Carey and the Jennings girl from the hotel!”
They made a pleasing group, the three modish young persons in evening clothes, if rather out of drawing in the dingy Altonia, and Nancy was an excellent foil for Janice Jennings’s hard-finished smartness.
“’Lo, Glen! Evening, Mrs. Parker!” the girl from Pittsburg greeted them. “What am I doing here, you ask—the butterfly in the ant hill? Or, should you say, grasshopper? Less picturesque but possibly more accurate. Well, I decided to see how the other half lives. Nancy had been dining with me at the B.V.D., and I persuaded her to bring me slumming. Pretty place you have here, Glen! The House Beautiful!”
Little Miss Carey merely trailed her heavy white lids over her hazel gaze and smiled faintly; it was amazing, how seldom Nancy spoke.
“But I think I’ll go back to the fleshpots, if any. Peter is a flop to-night; a flat tire. C’mon, Nancy!” Miss Jennings shot a sharp glance from the young part owner of the mill to the superintendent’s assistant. “In spite of Peter Piper’s pleas, I insist—” She stopped and stared at Pap Tolliver, advancing toward them at his shambling gait, his accordion under his arm, and a twist of grimy paper in his fingers.
“Page Rip Van Winkle,” said the northerner softly.