The interview with the lawyer did not take any long time, but he spent two hours with the superintendent of the road, who pronounced him “a little nice fellow with no airs about him. Asked a power of questions about Harry Lossing; guess there is something in that story about Lossing going to marry his daughter!”
Marston drove him to Lossing's office and left him there.
He was on the ground, and Marston lifting the whip to touch the horse, when he asked: “Say, before you go--is there any danger in leaving off the conductors?”
Marston was raised on mules, and he could not overcome a vehement distrust of electricity. “Well,” said he, “I guess you want the cold facts. The children are almighty thick down on Third Street, and children are always trying to see how near they can come to being killed, you know, sir; and then, the old women like to come and stand on the track and ask questions of the motorneer on the other track, so that the car coming down has a chance to catch 'em. The two together keep the conductors on the jump!”
“Is that so?” said Armorer, musingly; “well, I guess you'd better close with that insurance man and get the papers made out before we run the new way.”
“If we ever do run!” muttered the superintendent to himself as he drove away.
Armorer ran his sharp eye over the buildings of the Lossing Art Furniture Manufacturing Company, from the ugly square brick box that was the nucleus--the egg, so to speak--from which the great concern had been hatched, to the handsome new structures with their great arched windows and red mortar. “Pretty property, very pretty property,” thought Armorer; “wonder if that story Marston tells is true!” The story was to the effect that a few weeks before his last sickness the older Lossing had taken his son to look at the buildings, and said, “Harry, this will all be yours before long. It is a comfort to me to think that every workman I have is the better, not the worse, off for my owning it; there's no blood or dirt on my money; and I leave it to you to keep it clean and to take care of the men as well as the business.”
“Now, wasn't he a d---- fool!” said Armorer, cheerfully, taking out his note-book to mark.
And he went in. Harry greeted him with exceeding cordiality and a fine blush. Armorer explained that he had come to speak to him about the proposed street-car ordinances; he (Armorer) always liked to deal with principals and without formality; now, couldn't they come, representing the city and the company, to some satisfactory compromise? Thereupon he plunged into the statistics of the earnings and expenses of the road (with the aid of his note-book), and made the absolute necessity of retrenchment plain. Meanwhile, as he talked he studied the attentive listener before him; and Harry, on his part, made quite as good use of his eyes. Armorer saw a tall, athletic, fair young man, very carefully, almost foppishly dressed, with bright, steady blue eyes and a firm chin, but a smile under his mustache like a child's; it was so sunny and so quick. Harry saw a neat little figure in a perfectly fitting gray check travelling suit, with a rose in the buttonhole of the coat lapel. Armorer wore no jewellery except a gold ring on the little finger of his right hand, from which he had taken the glove the better to write. Harry knew that it was his dead wife's wedding-ring; and noticed it with a little moving of the heart. The face that he saw was pale but not sickly, delicate and keen. A silky brown mustache shot with gray and a Van-dyke beard hid either the strength or the weakness of mouth and chin. He looked at Harry with almond-shaped, pensive dark eyes, so like the eyes that had shone on Harry's waking and sleeping dreams for months that the young fellow felt his heart rise again. Armorer ended by asking Harry (in his most winning manner) to help him pull the ordinance out of the fire. “It would be,” he said, impressively, “a favor he should not forget!”