Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited.
"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for the past month?"
"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the ropes a bit better than he does."
"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some temporary arrangement until a new man is installed."
"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have been threatening to quit."
"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The air is something terrible."
"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a health resort?"
Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence.
"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause.
Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts concerning the sanitary arrangements.
"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging that room."
"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?"
"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead."
With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to better it.
Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him scornfully.
"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be to take out the north partition and build an extension like this."
"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection."
Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk.