"You heard him say what
would happen--please, please let it be fixed."

Amazed, Mr. Ffrench looked at her, his face setting.

"You forget your dignity," he retorted in displeasure. "This is mere
childishness, Emily. Men will be consulted more competent to decide
than this Lestrange. That will do."

From one to the other she gazed, then turned away.

"I will wait out in the cart," she said. "I--I would rather be
outdoors."

Dick Ffrench was up-stairs, standing with Lestrange in one of the
narrow aisles between lines of grimly efficient machines that bit or
cut their way through the steel and aluminum fed to them, when Rupert
came to him with a folded visiting card.

"Miss Ffrench sent it," was the explanation. "She's sitting out in her
horse-motor car, and she called me off the track to ask me to demean
myself by acting like a messenger boy. All right?"

"All right," said Dick, running an astonished eye over the card.

"No answer?"

"No answer."

"Then I'll hurry back to my embroidery. I'm several laps behind in my
work already."

"See here, Lestrange," Dick began, as the mechanician departed,
sitting down on a railing beside a machine steadily engaged in
notching steel disks into gear-wheels.

"Don't do that!" Lestrange exclaimed sharply. "Get up, Ffrench."

"It's safe enough."

"It's nothing of the kind. The least slip--"

"Oh, well," he reluctantly rose, "if you're going to get fussy. Read
what Emily sent up."

Lestrange accepted the card with a faint flicker of expression.

"Dick, uncle is making the steering-knuckle wait for expert opinion,"
the legend ran, in pencil. "Have Mr. Bailey strengthen Mr. Lestrange's
car, anyhow. Do not let him race so."

Near them two men were engaged in babbitting bearings, passing
ladlefuls of molten metal carelessly back and forth, and splashing
hissing drops over the floor; at them Lestrange gazed in silence,
after reading, the card still in his hand.

"Well?" Dick at last queried.

"Have Mr. Bailey do nothing at all," was the deliberate reply. "There
is an etiquette of subordination, I believe--this is Mr. Ffrench's
factory. I've done my part and we'll think no more of the matter. I
may be wrong. But I am more than grateful to Miss Ffrench."

"That's all you're going to do?"

"Yes. I wish you would not sit there."

"I'm tired; I won't fall in, and I want to think. We've been a lot
together this spring, Lestrange; I don't like this business about the