relish, restoring waste tissues from
two directors' meetings, a meeting of the Convention Committee of the
Chamber of Commerce, and an hour in his office at the bank. He was a
full-bodied, good-looking, amiable-mannered man, of sound stock and
excellent digestion, and wore white waistcoats the year round, and fine
blond mustaches, also the year round. He certainly did not look to the
casual eye like a shameless homicide, but rather like an English country
gentleman given to dogs. He was fifty-four years old, a hard worker for
all his indolent eye, and his favorite diversion was about twelve holes
of golf on Sunday morning, and his next favorite one table of bridge by
night in the library across the hall.

Greetings over, Mr. Heth said "Catch!" to his wife and daughter,
referring to the ten-dollar goldpieces from the directors, and remarked
that he hadn't been near the Works for two mornings, and that money made
the mare go. A sober look touched his fresh-colored face as he voiced
these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed
the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the
earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths
to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old
poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their
grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the
afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime,
dispatched the exotic meal with the cheerfulness of Property.

"Effete, Cally,--that's what this age is," said Mr. Heth, pushing back
his chair, and producing his gold toothpick. "Everybody looking for
somebody else's neck to hang on to. And makin' a lot of grafters out of
our poor class. Look at this Labor Commissioner and his new-fangled
nonsense. Nagging me to spend Lord knows how many thousands, making the
plant pretty and attractive for the hands. Voted for the fellow, too."

"I never heard of such a thing. What sort of things does he want you to
do, papa?"

"Turkish baths and manicures and chicken sandwiches, I guess. I don't
listen to his rot. Law's good enough for me. Point I make is that's the
spirit of the poor nowadays. I pay 'em wages that would have been
thought enormous a hundred years ago, but are they satisfied? Not on
your life!..."

Winter sunshine, filtering in through cream-colored curtains, touched
upon those refinements with which the pros