Noonan, he who was just now
starting out as a contractor, would be only too delighted to do some
figuring on it.

"Of course the best way of all to gather ideas at the start," said he,
staring through her, "is to go to the Works--go often.... There's no
other such way of seeing what the actual needs are."

"Yes ... Yes, of course that's true," said Cally.

But what she felt like saying was that she didn't want to go to the
Works at all, unless he could go with her.

"I want to get _your_ ideas now, please," she added--"everything you can
think of. You can't have any notion how ignorant I am.... But--oh,
there's one thing I wanted to speak to you about first. I suppose--even
at the best--it would be some time before the new building could begin?"

Oh, a few months, no doubt, before all plans would be ready, and her
father's arrangements made to move.

"Do you think the floors in this old building are very _strong_? The man
who was with me the day I went there didn't seem to think so--and I
didn't either! And some very heavy-looking new machines were being put
in the bunching-room, and I believe some more are going to be put in
to-morrow."

"Oh!... You mean you think they might overload the floor?"

"Don't you?"

"Well--it's possible," admitted Mr. V.V., slowly, and one could see that
he didn't altogether like the idea of anybody's criticizing Mr. Heth's
conduct of his business. "But--ah--really I don't--"

"Couldn't we fix it, in some simple way--brace up the floor somehow?"

"Oh, yes. You'd have no trouble in fixing it.... Far as that goes."

"Don't you think you could manage to say _we_ once?"

"Oh!" said Mr. V.V., pleased. "I could that!... I didn't know, you see,
how far you cared to let me in."

Cally smiled at him over the library table.

"Hasn't it occurred to you that you are in it, that you've been right in
the middle of it all along?"

He gave her one of his original looks, and said: "Well, I can't say it
had.... But it's where I'd rather be than anywhere else in the world."

"You can make nice speeches, at any rate.... Do you know you're the
strangest man, I believe, that ever lived?"

"No, that's news. Am I?... Well, in what way am I so strange?"

"Oh, it's a long, long story. But I'm going to tell it all to you some
day.... Do go on and help me about the floors. Papa won't. He didn't
seem to like my speaking about them at all. He says they'd hold hundreds
more machines if he only had