"I'd call it too dry," replied Jack, quietly.
"Are you bossing this job all the way through?" demanded Joshua Owen, angrily, stepping forward. "Mr. Farnum, Mr. Pollard, if these boys are to have charge of this work, I may as well stop."
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Farnum, coining forward.
"This younker is grumbling about the red lead cement," snapped the irate foreman.
"What's the complaint, Benson?" asked the boatyard owner.
"No complaint, Mr. Farnum," Jack answered, quickly. "Only, I've got to make the joint fast with red lead cement, and it seemed to me that this stuff is too dry. If I use it, it won't fill out smoothly enough. It's dry and crumbly, and I'm afraid the joint would be very defective."
"Nothing of the sort!" snapped Joshua Owen. "Boy, you've no business trying to do a man's work, anyway. Give me that cement, and I'll make the joint fast myself."
"All right," nodded Benson, stepping back. He started to pass the chunk of cement to the foreman, but Mr. Farnum quickly took it from him, then cast a look upward. Asa Partridge, the yard superintendent, a man past fifty, stood on the platform deck, looking down through the open manhole.
"Come down here, Mr. Partridge," hailed the yard's owner, while Joshua
Owen's scowl became deeper than ever. "Mr. Partridge, Benson says
this cement is too dry to make a joint tight with. Owen says it isn't.
Who wins the bet?" the owner finished, laughingly.
Asa Partridge, a man of long experience in steam-fitting, took the chunk of cement, examining it carefully, then picked it to pieces before he rejoined dryly: