"How?" she enquired, and he observed by the solid interest in her eye that she had swallowed the bait.
"Oh! I'm not doing it maliciously, of course, only following my instructions, which are, to waste coal."
"Really?" she asked, in doubt how to take him.
He laughed again. "I'm not giving it away to the poor, or anything of that sort, you know. But we're very, very safe here, safe from possible failure as far as steam goes, and the price we pay for our safety is high, excessive, it seems to me, in the matter of coal."
"Oh, but it's better to be safe, isn't it?"
"I don't know! Life is run on sporting chances, you know. It's the ultra-cautious man who makes a mess of things and dies young."
She laughed. "I went over the electricity works once with father and Mr Jones."
"What did you think of it?"
"Just nothing at all. Father and Mr Jones were explaining one against the other. I don't think either of them knew much about it."
"Poor Jones! he's not really an engineer, you know."