f himself returned.
Moreover, the work, thus urged, went rapidly, in spite of the high wages
he had to pay his labourers for their short hours. "It eats money," he
complained, and, in fact, by the time his vats and boilers were in
place it had eaten almost all he could supply; but in addition to his
equipment he now owned a stock of "raw material," raw indeed; and when
operations should be a little further along he was confident his banker
would be willing to "carry" him.

Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his
glue-making. The terrible smells came out of the sheds and went writhing
like snakes all through that quarter of the town. A smiling man,
strolling and breathing the air with satisfaction, would turn a corner
and smile no more, but hurry. However, coloured people had almost all
the dwellings of this old section to themselves; and although even they
were troubled, there was recompense for them. Being philosophic about
what appeared to them as in the order of nature, they sought neither
escape nor redress, and soon learned to bear what the wind brought them.
They even made use of it to enrich those figures of speech with which
the native impulses of coloured people decorate their communications:
they flavoured metaphor, simile, and invective with it; and thus may be
said to have enjoyed it. But the man who produced it took a hot bath
as soon as he reached his home the evening of that first day when his
manufacturing began. Then he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he
seemed to be haunted, and asked his wife if she "noticed anything."

She laughed and inquired what he meant.

"Seems to me as if that glue-works smell hadn't quit hanging to me," he
explained. "Don't you notice it?"

"No! What an idea!"

He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was sure "the dang glue
smell" was somehow sticking to him. Later, he went outdoors and walked
up and down the small yard in the dusk; but now and then he stood still,
with his head lifted, and sniffed the air suspiciously. "Can YOU smell
it?" he called to Alice, who sat upon the veranda, prettily dressed and
waiting in a reverie.

"Smell what, papa?"

"That dang glue-works."

She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said, "No! How
foolish! Why, papa, it's over two miles from here!"

"You don't get it at all?" he insisted.

"The idea! The air is lovely to-night, papa."

The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was