in her an
unsuspected, humorous sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat
to him," Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right
up to capacity in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to
the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and Holster, of the
Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I
stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him."

This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving
loyalty in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence.
He was a self-contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly
hair, cordial and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer;
liked by them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from
theirs. He was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid
promotion. He went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent
Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return reddened and
tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put on no
airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of
his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs,
to a category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are
sustained from above. Even Ditmar was not of these.

"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told
Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics."

And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Will you take me through
sometime, Mr. Caldwell?"

"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you
can spare the time."

Her face had become scarlet.

"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me
himself."

"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together
and went downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton
Department. The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather
tiresome; but now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was
conscious of a keen stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its
illumination perplexed him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely
hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been
turned. It glowed with a strange and disturbing radiance....

As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a
miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before
suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the tr