For the next month Carstairs saw little of Darwen except at the works; he was busy with his mother, getting a house and supervising the moving. At the works they talked simply "shop." Carstairs was absolutely lost to everything except engines, boilers, dynamos, etc. For twelve hours a day he was at the works planning, improving, overhauling.
"We'll mop off that £1000 debt, and show a profit in the first year," he announced to Darwen enthusiastically.
"Yes," Darwen agreed, and his marvellous eyes shone with an even greater enthusiasm. "We'll show 'em how to run things on this job, eh?"
"I think so."
"Rather, not a doubt of it."
In three months they knocked £1000 off the coal bill, in spite of the strenuous opposition of certain members of the council.
"Rummy things, those chaps making such a row about our getting different coal and weighing it ourselves, isn't it?" Carstairs asked.
Darwen smiled. "The application of a little oil," he observed, "but they've got up against the wrong men this time, eh? We have the doctor solid behind us, too."
A sudden light seemed to break in upon Carstairs. "Oh!" he said, almost in horror. He was honest to the core, every fibre in his body vibrated in disgust at such treacherous roguery laid bare under his very eyes, as it were.
"Didn't you really tumble to it?" Darwen seemed genuinely astonished.