"My dear chap, you don't give sporting chances to an engine." He looked at Carstairs curiously. "We have different methods of looking at things; I wonder who will prove most successful in the end."
"Your experiment would have failed any way if Foulkes hadn't been a plucky, obstinate sort of chap."
"Exactly. That goes to prove the correctness of my observations. I had placed Foulkes rightly as the man to eat onions. That is to say, to eat an entire onion. The successful man is the man who can make others eat onions, and also pair up the right man with the right onion. I have an ambition to be a successful man."
"So have I, but I also wish to play the game."
"Again we disagree, I wish to collar the stakes."
Carstairs was silent for some time. "Let us agree to differ. You don't mean all you say, or all that your words convey to me. You're a sportsman."
"That's true. I'm somewhat hampered by a sporting instinct, and if I followed my theory to its logical conclusion, I should not now be reasoning with you."
They sat down on the switchboard and glanced over the technical papers that were just out that day.
Two months passed away and Carstairs found to his very great pleasure that his nerves had regained their normal steadiness. He and Darwen were both scanning the advertisement columns of the technical press with great anxiety and interest; they were both answering advertisements, and they had come to an agreement not to both apply for the same job. They were watching with eager interest a town in the south of England. They had both seen tenders out for plant about a year ago; then they saw an advertisement for a chief engineer.
"In about a month he'll want shifts," Carstairs said.