"Thanks—thanks. I will."
That night Jack Carstairs sat up very late with his father in his study. And next morning the train whisked him north, to the dim, grey north, and the engines, and the steam, and the hard, hard men, mostly engineers. Jack was very sad and silent in his corner of a third-class carriage all the way.
CHAPTER XVIII
For three months Carstairs worked steadily at the beginning of things electrical; he cleaned the switchboard and regulated the volts; he took orders from a youth, rather younger and considerably less experienced than himself. For those three months the world seemed a very dull place to him.
Then, quite by accident, as these things always happen, he met a man, a casual caller, who wished to see round the works; the shift engineer told Carstairs off to show him round, because it was "too much fag" to do it himself.
He was an oldish man with whiskers and heavy, bushy eyebrows, just turning grey; his questions were few and to the point, and Carstairs seemed to feel he had met a kindred spirit at once. He listened attentively to Carstairs' clear and concise explanations, and when it was over he did not offer him a shilling as sometimes happened, but in the casual, unemotional, north-country way, he handed him his card and asked if he would like to see round his works "over yonder."
Carstairs glanced from the card in his hand to the rather shabby individual, with the "dickey," and slovenly, dirty tie, in front of him.
"Thanks, I'll come to-morrow," he said.
"Will ye? Then ye'll find me there at nine."