He wondered if he could find out anything about this from Mr. Crittenden and put a question to him about his relations with his men.  He tried to make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he said the words, he knew just how flat and parlor-reformerish they sounded; and it didn’t surprise him a bit to have the business-man bristle up and snap his head off.  It had sounded as though he didn’t know a thing about business—­he, the very marrow of whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the only thing that could keep it going was the fear of death in every man’s heart, lest the others get ahead of him and trample him down.

He decided that he wouldn’t say another thing, just endure the temporary boredom of being trotted about to have things explained to him, which he hadn’t any intention of trying to understand.

But Mr. Crittenden did not try to explain.  Perhaps he was bored himself, perhaps he guessed the visitor’s ignorance.  He just walked around from one part of the big, sunshiny shops to another, taking advantage of this opportunity to look things over for his own purposes.  And everywhere he went, he gave and received back that curious, new look of openness.

It was not noisy here as in the saw-mill, but very quiet and peaceful, the bee-like whirring of the belts on the pulleys the loudest continuous sound.  It was clean, too.  The hardwood floor was being swept clean of sawdust and shavings all the time, by a lame old man, who pottered tranquilly about, sweeping and cleaning and putting the trash in a big box on a truck.  When he had it full, he beckoned to a burly lad, shoving a truck across the room, and called in a clear, natural, friendly voice, “Hey, Nat, come on over.”  The big lad came, whistling, pushed the box off full, and brought it back empty, still whistling airily.

There were a good many work-people in sight.  Mr. Welles made a guessing estimate that the business must keep about two hundred busy.  And there was not one who looked harried by his work.  The big, cluttered place heaped high with piles of curiously shaped pieces of wood, filled with oddly contrived saws and lathes and knives and buffers for sawing and turning and polishing and fitting those bits of wood, was brooded over as by something palpable by an emanation of order.  Mr. Welles did not understand a detail of what he was looking at, but from the whole, his mind, experienced in business, took in a singularly fresh impression that everybody there knew what he was up to, in every sense of the word.

He and Mr. Crittenden stood for a time looking at and chatting to a gray-haired man who was polishing smoothly planed oval bits of board.  He stopped as they talked, ran his fingers over the satin-smoothed surface with evident pleasure, and remarked to his employer, “Mighty fine maple we’re getting from the Warner lot.  See the grain in that!”