it."

"In the name of Heaven, why?"

"In the name of hades, because we've got to get a herd of railroad
locomotives to France, and sending them over in pieces won't do. They
want 'em ready to run. So the powers that be have ordered me to
provide two hatchways big enough to lower whole locomotives through,
and pigeonholes in the hold big enough to carry them. As far as the
_Mamise_ is concerned, that means we've just about got to rub it out
and do it over again. It's a case of back to the mold-loft for
_Mamise_."

"And about how much more delay will this mean?"

"Oh, about ninety days or thereabouts. If we're lucky we'll launch her
by spring."

This was almost worse than the death of the _Clara_. That tragedy had
been noble; it dealt a noble blow and woke the heart to a noble grief
and courage. But deferment made the heart sick, and the brain and
almost the stomach.

Davidge liked the disappointment no better than Mamise did, but he was
used to it.

"And now aren't you glad you're not a ship-builder? How would you feel
if you had got your wish to work in the yard and had turned your
little velvet hands into a pair of nutmeg-graters by driving about ten
thousand rivets into those plates, only to have to cut 'em all out
again and drive 'em into an entirely new set of plates, knowing that
maybe they'd have to come out another time and go back? How'd you like
that?"

Mamise lifted her shoulders and let them fall.

Davidge went on:

"That's a business man's life, my dear--eternally making things that
won't sell, putting his soul and his capital and his preparation into
a pile of stock that nobody will take off his hands. But he has to go
right on, borrowing money and pledging the past for the future and
never knowing whether his dreams will turn out to be dollars
or--junk!"

Mamise realized for the first time the pathos, the higher drama of the
manufacturer's world, that world which poets and some other literary
artists do not describe because they are too ignorant, too petty, too
bookish. They sneer at the noble word _commercial_ as if it were a
reproach!

Mamise, however, looked on Davidge in his swivel-chair as a kind of
despondent demigod, a Titan weary of the eternal strife. She tried to
rise beyond a poetical height to the clouds of the practical.

"What will you do with all the workmen who are on that job?"

Davidge grinned. "They're announcing their monthly strike for higher
wages--threatening t