That night as Carstairs went home his ambitions began to soar very high again.
CHAPTER VII
At the end of a month Darwen wrote a rather long letter, giving a detailed description of the station and staff. "The plant is good," he wrote, "all brand new and full of possibilities. The chief assistant is a delightful thickhead, and the chief—words fail me to describe him. The possibilities and probabilities of this job are immense."
Carstairs read it through twice carefully and thoughtfully; he penned a brief reply. "No news here. New man an utter ass, blown out with conceit, impossible to share digs with him." That was about all, it was almost telegraphic.
At the works things went on much as usual. Thompson made more than usual overtures of friendliness; he wished to impress on Carstairs that it was through no feeling of personal bias that he had not recommended him for the Southville job. Frequently when they were testing with high tension currents he caught Thompson looking at him with a sort of wonder and distinct approval.
One day when there was a fault on the mains, and Thompson had been out all night in the rain testing and digging out cables and opening junction boxes till he was tired and weary of all the world, he came into the works in a fine spirit of irritation. "We'll have to burn the damn thing out," he said. "Run up a machine on it."
By a specially complicated arrangement of the already complicated switchboard, it was possible to run any machine on any feeder. The Shift Engineer signalled for another machine, and Carstairs plugged her in on the faulty circuit. The fuse held for about one minute, then it blew with a flash and a bang right in Carstairs' face. Promptly and coolly he switched out and went through the complicated operation necessary to isolate that section.
Thompson watched him in some surprise. "You've got used to fuses, then," he said.
Carstairs flushed. "Er—" he hesitated a moment. Thompson waited in expectant silence, which is the severest cross-examination to a very young man. "I got a shock some time ago and it upset my nerves a bit. I'm alright now."