The rest of the year had been, Neale told her, a slow, dogged struggle to find out what after all it was nobody's business to tell him; to invent a system of recording what he found out that would not only be fool-proof but stenographer-proof; to collect exact statistics as to the cost of production and transportation; and to bring together items of account-keeping that had never before had even a speaking acquaintance with each other. "I've traced a plank from the tree to tide-water, inch by inch, my note-book in my hand, setting down every sixteenth of a cent per board foot that it cost till we sold it to the retail dealer, watching it as if it were the prince-royal of a reigning house and I the secret-service man set to keep track of him! I've covered reams of paper figuring out the cost of the office-work of getting that plank sold--extra office-work, you know, not ordinary overhead;--and, by heck, I don't see how they've ever managed to run their old business a minute, the haphazard way they've been going at it! Nobody knew anything, not _all_ of anything! I seem to have been marking time, but just you wait till I get out of the office and into the real game. I know more about some things than any of the buyers, even the old-timers." "Well, there must be a big profit in business or they wouldn't be able to conduct it that loose way," said Martha. "Oh, the profits are big, all right," Neale concurred. "Old man Gates has more cash than he knows what to do with. And not one of his grandchildren amounts to a whoop. When his son, the one who's our General Manager now, retires, there won't be a Gates left in the Gates Lumber Company." "They won't mind," said Martha. "You bet your life they won't _mind_," said Neale. "Far from it! Most likely they've hardly heard the name of it. They're all living in Europe now, buying villas and things out of the money the Company makes. Our Mr. Gates never sees any of his family except when he takes a vacation and goes to Florence or England. All _they_ want out of the lumber business is a fat wad of easy money." "That's not right," said Martha suddenly. "That's not right." "It's not right if getting something for nothing is wrong," Neale agreed casually. "But what are you going to do about it? There you are. That's the way things go." Martha made no answer. There was a little silence. Then she said: "All that account-keeping, that detail work--it doesn't seem so terribly interesting to me, Neale. Haven't you found it awfully dull sometimes?"