Mr. Welles looked at him earnestly.  “Are you . . . have you . . .  Mr. Bayweather has told us so much about all you do for the men . . . how they are all devoted to you.”

Neale looked and felt annoyed.  Bayweather and his palaver!  “I don’t do anything for them, except give them as good wages as the business will stand, and as much responsibility for running things as they’ll take.  Beyond that, I let them alone.  I don’t believe in what’s known as ‘welfare work.’  I wouldn’t want them messing around in my private life, and I don’t believe they’d like me in theirs.”

The necessity to raise his voice to a shout in order to make himself heard above the tearing scream of the saws made him sound very abrupt and peremptory, more so than he had meant.  As he finished speaking his eyes met those of the older man, and were held by the clarity and candor of the other’s gaze.  They were like a child’s eyes in that old face.  It was as though he had been abrupt and impatient to Elly or Mark.

As he looked he saw more than candor and clarity.  He saw a deep weariness.

Neale smoothed his forehead, a little ashamed of his petulance, and drew his companion further from the saws where the noise was less.  He meant to say something apologetic, but the right phrase did not come to him.  And as Mr. Welles said nothing further, they walked on in silence.  They passed through the first and second floors of the mill, where the handling of the smaller pieces was done, and neither of them spoke a word.  Neale looked about him at the familiar, familiar scene, and found it too dull to make any comment on.  What was there to say?  This was the way you manufactured brush-backs and wooden boxes and such-like things, and that was all.  The older men bent over their lathes quietly, the occasional woman-worker smartly hammering small nails into the holes already bored for her, the big husky boys shoved the trucks around, the elevator droned up and down, the belts flicked as they sped around and around.  Blest if he could think of any explanation to make to a grown man on so simple and everyday a scene.  And yet he did not enjoy this silence because it seemed like a continuation of his grumpiness of a few minutes ago.  Well, the next time the old fellow said anything, he’d fall over himself to be nice in his answer.

Presently as they came to the outside door, Mr. Welles remarked with a gentle dignity, in evident allusion to Neale’s cutting him short, “I only meant that I was very much interested in what I see here, and that I would like very much to know more about it.”

Neale felt he fairly owed him an apology.  He began to understand what Marise meant when she had said the old fellow was one you loved on sight.  It was her way, emotionally heightened as usual, of saying that he was really a very nice old codger.  “I’ll be glad to tell you anything you want to know, Mr. Welles,” he said.  “But I haven’t any idea what it is that interests you.  You fire ahead and ask questions and I’ll agree to answer them.”