umorous sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him,"
Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity
in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the
first of April, you know, and Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't
be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I stand to lose twenty-five
dollars on him."

This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty
in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a
self-contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial
and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by
them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He
was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He
went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent Sundays and holidays
in delightful places, to return reddened and tanned; and though he never
spoke about these excursions, and put on no airs of superiority, there
was that in his manner and even in the cut of his well-worn suits
proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a category of
fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained from
above. Even Ditmar was not of these.

"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told
Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics."

And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Will you take me through
sometime, Mr. Caldwell?"

"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you can
spare the time."

Her face had become scarlet.

"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me
himself."

"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went
downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department.
The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but
now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen
stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed
him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto
scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been turned. It glowed
with a strange and disturbing radiance....

As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a
miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before
suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature.