of it, and who evidently hated above everything else, having amateur directors come horning in on what was no party of theirs.  ‘If they get their dividends all right, what more do they want?’ was his motto.  I never was able to make any sense out of it.  It’s all on such a preposterously big scale now.  Once in a while, touring, I have come across one of our branch establishments and have stopped my car to see the men come out of the buildings at quitting-time.  That’s as close as I have ever come.  Do you really know their names?”

“I can’t pronounce all the French-Canadian names to suit them, but I know them all, yes.  Most of them are just the overflow of the rural population around here.”

He said to himself in congratulation, “Between us, we pried old Bayweather loose from his soft soap, pretty neatly,” and gave the man before him a look of friendly understanding.  He was a little startled, for an instant, by the expression in the other’s bright eyes, which he found fixed on him with an intentness almost disconcerting.  “Does he think I’m trying to put something over on him?” he asked himself with a passing astonishment, “or is he trying to put something over on me?” Then he remembered that everyone had spoken of Marsh’s eyes as peculiar; it was probably just his habit.  “He can look right through me and out at the other side, for all I care!” he thought indifferently, meeting the other’s gaze with a faintly humorous sense of something absurd.

Marise had come back now, and was saying, “You really must get started, Neale, the men will be quitting work soon.”

“Yes, yes, this minute,” he told her, and led the way with Mr. Welles, leaving Marise and Mr. Bayweather to be showman for Mr. Marsh.  He now remembered that he had not heard the older man say a single word as yet, and surmised that he probably never said much when the fluent Mr. Marsh was with him.  He wondered a little, as they made their way to the saw-mill, what Marise saw in either of them to interest her so much.  Oh well, they were a change, of course, from Ashley and Crittenden’s people, and different from the Eugenia Mills bunch, in New York, too.

He stood now, beside Mr. Welles, in the saw-mill, the ringing high crescendo scream of the saws filling the air.  Marise stood at the other end talking animatedly to the two she had with her.  Marise was a wonder on conversation anyhow.  What could she find to say, now, for instance?  What in the world was there to say to an ex-office manager of a big electrical company about a wood-working business?

His eyes were caught by what one of the men was doing and he yelled at him sharply, “Look out there, Harry!  Stop that!  What do I have a guard rail there for, anyhow?”

“What was the matter?” asked Mr. Welles, startled.

“Oh, nothing much.  One of the men dodging under a safety device to save him a couple of steps.  They get so reckless about those saws.  You have to look out for them like a bunch of bad children.”