“If the weather is bad of course we do not put out the leather; in case a sudden storm comes up while it is out the factory whistle sounds and every man understands that he is to drop whatever he is doing, no matter what it is, and rush to the yard to help rescue the stock before it is spoiled.”
“I never heard of anything so funny!” cried Peter.
“Funny, is it? You’ll not be thinking so when you have to take your turn at it,” protested the Irishman, grimly. “Just you be busy at doing some fussy thing you can’t leave and wait till you hear the blast of the whistle! Out you’ll have to cut and run like as if you were a schoolboy going through a fire drill. Then, you see, there are all those frames of wet leather to be set up somewhere indoors where they won’t be injured until the storm is over and they can be carried out again.”
“And suppose the stormy weather lasts several days?”
“No leather can be dried. Nor can you put it out on very dusty days lest the particles in the air stick on the moist surface and dry there. A strong wind is another bad thing, because it catches the frames as if they were sails and often smashes them all to pieces, spoiling the leather stretched on them.”
“Well, it does seem as if somebody might be smart enough to think of some plan to prevent all this. Have people tried—lots of people, I mean—to make a gloss that will not need the sun to dry it?”
“Many and many a man has experimented and failed,” replied the workman. “For years chemists have been working at the puzzle, but so far they never have got anywhere.”
“If I only knew more about chemistry I’d try,” cried Peter.
The old man looked amused at the boy’s enthusiasm.
“Would you, indeed!” grinned he. “Well, if you succeeded you would be the first. But I’m not discouraging you, sonny. Sure if none of us were young and hopeful nothing great would be done in the world. You sound as if you might be Peter Strong—the lad they talk so much of in the other factories.”