“I’m sure I could step into his shoes,” she replied.  “Only I hope he won’t die.”

“I hope he won’t, either,” said Ditmar.  “And as for you—­”

“Never mind me, now,” she said.

He bent over her.

“Janet, you’re the greatest girl in the world.”

Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they might explore together.  She was useful.  Sometimes, however, he seemed to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too easily, had been too uniform.  His temper was quick, the prospect of opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from his opinions.  At other times Janet had seen him overrule them ruthlessly; humiliate them.  There were days when things went wrong, when there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual.  On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office.  His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an expression that always irritated Ditmar—­the conscientious superintendent having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very bearing.  Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult letter, and looked up sharply.

“Well,” he asked, “what’s the trouble now?”

Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals.  When anything happened, he had the air of declaring, “I told you so.”

“You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January.”

“Yes, what of it?” Ditmar cut in.  “The notices have been posted, as the law requires.”

“The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them.  A delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours.”

“Of course it’s going to be cut,” said Ditmar.  “What do they suppose?  That we’re going to pay ’em for work they don’t do?  The hands not paid by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day.  And there’s got to be some limit to this thing.  If these damned demagogues in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children every three years or so—­and we can’t run the mill without the women and children—­we might as well shut down right now.  Three years ago, when they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay.  I said so then, at the conference, but they wouldn’t listen to me.  They listened this time.  Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut ’em up.  No, they won’t get any more pay, not a damned cent.”

Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously.

“I told them that.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they thought there’d be a strike.”