Technically speaking, which was the way Mr. MacQueen spoke, this was the receiving-and stemming-room.  It was as big as a barn, the full size of the building, except for the end cut off to make the offices.  Negroes worked here; negro men, mostly wearing red undershirts.  They sat in long rows, with quick fingers stripping the stems from the not unfragrant leaves.  These were stemmers, it was learned.  Piles of the brown tobacco stood beside each stemmer, bales of it were stacked, ceiling-high, at the farther end of the room, awaiting their attentions.  The negroes eyed the visitors respectfully.  They were heard to laugh and joke over their labors.  If they knew of anything homicidal in their lot, certainly they bore it with a fine humorous courage.

Down the aisle between the black rows, Cally picked her way after Hugo and Mr. MacQueen.  Considering that all this was her father’s, she felt abashingly out of place, most intrusive; when she caught a dusky face turned upon her she hastily looked another way.  Still, she felt within her an increasing sense of cheerfulness.  Washington Street sensibilities were offended, naturally.  The busy colored stemmers were scarcely inviting to the eye; the odor of the tobacco soon grew a little overpowering; there were dirt and dust and an excess of steam-heat—­“Tobacco likes to be warm,” said MacQueen.  And yet the dainty visitor’s chief impression, somehow, was of system and usefulness and order, of efficient and on the whole well-managed enterprise.

“If there’s anything the matter here,” thought she, “men will have to quarrel and decide about it ...  Just as I said.”

The inspecting party went upward, and these heartening impressions were strengthened.  On the second floor was another stemming-room, long and hot like the other; only here the stemming was done by machines—­“for the fancy goods”—­and the machines were operated by negro women.  They were middle-aged women, many of them, industrious and quite placid-looking.  Perhaps a quarter of the whole length of the room was prosaically filled with piled tobacco stored ready for the two floors of stemmers.  The inspection here was brief, and to tell the truth, rather tame, like an anti-climax.  Not a trace or a vestige of homicide was descried, not a blood-spot high or low....

Cally had been observing Hugo, who looked so resplendent against this workaday background, and felt herself at a disadvantage with him.  He had not wanted to come at all, but now that they were here, he exhibited a far more intelligent interest in what he saw than she did or could.  Oddly enough, he appeared to know a good deal about the making of cigars, and his pointed comments gradually elicited a new tone from MacQueen, who was by now talking to him almost as to an equal.  Several times Cally detected his eyes upon her, not bored but openly quizzical.

“Learning exactly how a cheroot factory ought to be run?” he asked, sotto voce, as they left the second floor.