“We’re all in it now,” he said simply.  “It’s no longer our army and navy against their army and navy and the rest of us looking on from the side lines.  It’s our complete material resources and man power against their complete resources and man power.  If they win, the world won’t be worth living in, for the Anglo-Saxon.  So we’ve got to beat them.  Every man’s job from now on is going to be either fighting or working.  We’ve got to have ships.  I’m organizing that yard to work top-speed.  I’m trying to set a pace.  Watch us on the North Shore.  The man in the trenches won’t say we didn’t back him up.”

It sounded well.  To Thompson it gave a feeling of dissatisfaction which was nowise lessened by the momentary gleam in Sophie’s eyes as they rested briefly on Tommy and passed casually to him—­and beyond.

He was growing slowly to understand that the war had somehow—­in a fashion beyond his comprehension—­bitten deep into Sophie Carr’s soul.  She thought about it, if she seldom talked.  What was perhaps more vital, she felt about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because he had not experienced such feeling himself.  He only divined this.  Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings.  And divining this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—­who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest.  Thompson rather resented that imputation.  Privately he considered Tommy’s speech a trifle grandiloquent.  He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in more ways than one.

Nor did he fail to wonder at the dry smile that hovered about Sam Carr’s lips until that worthy old gentleman put his hand over his mouth to hide it, while his shrewd old eyes twinkled with inner amusement.  There was something more than amusement, too.  If Wes Thompson had not known that Sam Carr liked Tommy, rather admired his push and ability to hold his own in the general scramble, he would have said Carr’s smile and eyes tinged the amusement with something like contempt.

That puzzled Thompson.  The Dominion, as well as the Empire, was slowly formulating the war-doctrine that men must either fight or work.  Tommy, with his executive ability, his enthusiasm, was plunging into a needed work.  Tommy had a right to feel that he was doing a big thing.  Thompson granted him that.  Why, then, should Carr look at him like that?

He was still recurring to that when he drove down town with Tommy later in the evening.  He was not surprised that Tommy sauntered into his rooms after putting up his machine.  He had been in the habit of doing that until lately, and Thompson knew now that Tommy must have been very busy on that shipyard organization.  It had been easy for them to drop into the old intimacy which had grown up between them on that hard, long trail between Lone Moose and the Stikine.  They had a lot of common ground to meet on besides that.