The veteran saluted as smartly as had the soldier and trudged away on the heels of Sweetsir.
"Ain't there any way of your making that infernal old tin soldier up at the State House lay his paws off our paving crew?" asked the superintendent.
"Hush, Baldwin!" chided the mayor, unruffled, speaking indulgently. "We seem to have a new war on the board! Have you forgotten, after all that has been happening in this world, that in time of war we must sacrifice public improvements and private enterprises? Go on and do your best with the paving."
"Hell is paved with good intentions, but I can't put 'em down on McNamee Avenue."
"Of course not, Baldwin! That would be using war material that will be urgently needed, if I'm any judge of these times."
"Why, the hell architects seem to be planning an extension of the premises," drawled Morrison.
In the past, each day after lunch, Mac Tavish had been enabled to get back to the sanity of a well-conducted woolen-mill business; in the peace that descended on the office afternoons he put out of his mind the nightmare of the forenoons and tried not to think too much of what the morrows promised.
Stewart Morrison had caused it to be known in Marion that he reserved afternoons for the desk affairs of St. Ronan's mill.
Mac Tavish always brought his lunch; he cooked it himself in his bachelor apartment and warmed it up in the office over a gas-burner at high noon.
While he was brushing the crumbs of an oaten cake off his desk, six men filed in. He knew them well. They were from the Marion Chamber of Commerce; they made up the Industrial Development Committee.
"I'm afraid we're a bit too early to see the mayor," suggested Chairman Despeaux.
"Ye are! Nigh twenty-two hours too early to see the mayor!"
"But we 'phoned the house and were told he had left to come to the office!"
"The mayor--mind ye, the _mayor_--he cooms frae the mill at--"
Mac Tavish remembered the crashing blow to his proud pronunciamiento that forenoon, and his natural caution regarding statements caused him to hesitate. "He is supposed to coom frae the mill at ten o'clock, antemeridian! Postmeridian, Master Morrison, of St. Ronan's--not the mayor--he cooms to his desk yon--well, when he cooms isna the concern o' those who are speirin for a mayor."