"Miss Ffrench sent it," was the explanation. "She's sitting out in her horse-motor car, and she called me off the track to ask me to demean myself by acting like a messenger boy. All right?" "All right," said Dick, running an astonished eye over the card. "No answer?" "No answer." "Then I'll hurry back to my embroidery. I'm several laps behind in my work already." "See here, Lestrange," Dick began, as the mechanician departed, sitting down on a railing beside a machine steadily engaged in notching steel disks into gear-wheels. "Don't do that!" Lestrange exclaimed sharply. "Get up, Ffrench." "It's safe enough." "It's nothing of the kind. The least slip--" "Oh, well," he reluctantly rose, "if you're going to get fussy. Read what Emily sent up." Lestrange accepted the card with a faint flicker of expression. "Dick, uncle is making the steering-knuckle wait for expert opinion," the legend ran, in pencil. "Have Mr. Bailey strengthen Mr. Lestrange's car, anyhow. Do not let him race so." Near them two men were engaged in babbitting bearings, passing ladlefuls of molten metal carelessly back and forth, and splashing hissing drops over the floor; at them Lestrange gazed in silence, after reading, the card still in his hand. "Well?" Dick at last queried. "Have Mr. Bailey do nothing at all," was the deliberate reply. "There is an etiquette of subordination, I believe--this is Mr. Ffrench's factory. I've done my part and we'll think no more of the matter. I may be wrong. But I am more than grateful to Miss Ffrench." "That's all you're going to do?" "Yes. I wish you would not sit there." "I'm tired; I won't fall in, and I want to think. We've been a lot together this spring, Lestrange; I don't like this business about the steering-gear. Do you go down to the Beach to-morrow?" "To-night. To-morrow I must put in practising on the track. I would have been down to-day if there had not been so much to do here. Are you coming with me, or not until the evening of the start?" Dick stirred uncomfortably. "I don't want to come at all, thank you. I saw you race once." "You had better get used to it," Lestrange quietly advised. "The day may come when there is no one to take your place. This factory will be yours and you will have to look after your own interests. I wish you would come down and represent the company at this race." "I haven't the head for it." "I do not agree with you." Their eyes met in a long regard. Here, in the crowded room of workers, the ceaseless uproar shut in their conversation with a walled completeness of privacy. "I'm not sure whether you know it, Lestrange, but you've got me all stirred up since I met you," the younger man confessed plaintively. "You're different from other fellows and you've made me different. I'd rather be around the factory than anywhere else I know, now. But honestly I like you too well to watch you race." "I want you to come." "I--"