the room--"

"Well, he _knows_.... He's--he's had the strain figured out. Of course."

So had Time, the master-humorist, reversed positions between Heths and
Vivians. The old Arraigner, for his part, seemed to feel now that, to
all intents and purposes, papa _had_ put up the building six
years ago....

But Cally explained how floors and machines had got upon her nerves.
This was, she said, _our_ first point to settle. And thereupon the young
man at once addressed himself to the question of remedies; sketching
with his finger on the table-top, till she got note-paper and pencils
from mamma's desk in the corner, switched light into a reading-lamp, and
came and sat down beside him. On the paper V.V. obligingly produced an
outline of the three floors of the present factory, accurately locating
stairway and elevator shaft; even the point where the cloak-room was to
be knocked out to give the space needed for the new machines....

"How in the world do you know so much about the Works?"

"Oh--well, you see, the shipping clerk there is quite a friend of mine,"
said V.V. "A very nice fellow, sort of a Lithuanian, named Dolak. Don't
be offended, but I--I've been down there once or twice at night."

However, he seemed stumped as to the best method of support, admitting
that it was not so simple as it seemed. And presently, when he had tried
and condemned columns from floor to floor, the girl said, hesitatingly:

"Dr. Vivian, do you think props--outside--would do any good?"

He turned his intent gaze upon her; he was frowning absorbedly and
looking rather doubtful about it all.

"I mean iron braces running from the ground on each side of the
building," said Cally--"and holding up girders, or whatever you call
them, under the bunching-room floor?"

He gazed a moment, and then exclaimed:

"Oh--good! _Oh, that's good_!... That would do it--do it perfectly!..."

He proceeded with eagerness to sketch in her square-arch braces under
his bunching-room floor, and he said again: "Perfect solution!... Why,
you ought to have been a builder!"

"Oh, I--just happened to see a picture of something like that in the
encyclopaedia this afternoon."

Her tone was depreciatory, not suggesting that she had looked some time
before she happened to see that picture. But within she was feeling the
strangest, the most exhilarating thrills.... Oh, the clearness of being
a _fellow-worker_; of praise that had nothing to do with a candidacy for
m