“Why call me sir? If you were what--well, to be frank, what I expected to find you, a spinner’s wench, no more than that, why then your sirring me would be justifiable. There are social laws. I don’t deny it.” “We have no position,” she assented. “What’s position when there’s beauty? You have that which cuts across the laws. Beauty, and not rustic beauty either, but beauty that’s been worked on and refined... I go too fast, I say too much. Excuse a man in the heat of making a discovery for being frank about what he’s found and forget my frankness and forgive it. I spoke only to convince you that a ‘sir’ from you to me is to reverse the verities.” “But you are Mr. Hepplestall?” “Then call me so. I mount no pedestal for you.” Then Peter came in, and Hepplestall retired his thoughts of Phoebe to some secondary brain-cell that lay becomingly remote from Dorothy Verners and from his immediate plan of picking up knowledge from Peter. The lawyer had been right: there was no question of Peter’s setting a price upon his trade secrets, he was ravished by the interest his ground-landlord was pleased to take in his little factory and if he was puzzled to find Hepplestall intelligent and searching in his questions, there was none more pleased than Peter to answer with painstaking elaboration. Once Reuben asked, “Are there not factories driven by steam?” And Peter was wonderfully shrewd. “There are fools in every trade,” he said, “hotheads that let wild fancies carry off their commonsense.” “Steam is a fancy, then? It does not work?” “I have never seen it work,” said Peter, which was true; but he had not gone to look as, presently, Reuben went, sucking up experience everywhere with a bee-like industry. Meantime, he astonished Peter by proposing himself as paying guest while he worked side by side with the men and women in the factory.