At this point it pleased Miss Virginia to play the part of the innocent and the uninformed. “How should I know anything about it?” she queried. “Could you explain it so that a woman could understand?” “I can explain it so that this one woman I’m talking to can understand. Have you ever happened to read a contract and specifications?” “What a question!” “I didn’t suppose you had. They are like the Congressional Record--nobody reads them unless it’s a necessity. But they are fearfully and wonderfully constructed. One of the clauses in the regulation form reads something like this: ‘The engineer of the party of the first part’--that’s the railroad company in the present instance--‘reserves the right to pass upon all work and material, and to reject either if found, in his judgment, to be unsatisfactory.’ Mark the wording and you’ll notice that it leaves an open door wide enough to drive a locomotive through. And up here we have a man against us who would like to hitch a whole train of cars to the locomotive.” “Mr. Lushing, you mean?” “The same.” “Have you met him yet?” “Not yet; he hasn’t been on the job in person since I came. I understand he has gone East. But he has left some pretty able fault-finders to represent him, I can assure you. If there is anything in the category of crime that they don’t accuse us of committing, it is something they have temporarily forgotten. But you mustn’t make me talk shop all the time. I’m sure it bores you, only you are too good-natured to say so.” “A man’s work, if it is at all worth while, ought not to bore anybody. It is your life, isn’t it?” “It was, up to just a little while ago.” “What happened a little while ago?” “You came.” “That is another of the sayings that doesn’t fit,” she warned him. “All right; we’ll talk about something else. How long can you stay?” “I don’t know. Father is calling it his vacation, and threatens to go trout-fishing in the mountains.” “That will be fine. If I didn’t have to watch Lushing’s outfit so closely, I’d like to go with him.” She looked up quickly. “Have you ever had a real vacation, David?” “I suppose not; not in your sense of the word. I was out on field work during the four college summers. I’m saving up for my honeymoon.” “I thought you said that was only a dream; a ‘pipe-dream,’ you called it, didn’t you?” “I did; and it is. I was only joking. The only thing I can talk seriously about is the big job. And you are not interested especially in that--or are you? Plegg said one day when we were speaking of you that you were a pretty good little engineer. I’m quoting him literally. He meant it as a compliment.” “Mr. Plegg,” she said, with a touch of abstraction which the mention of the first assistant’s name seemed to evoke. “Do you like him?”