"Not at all," she answered gravely, tickled by the elaborate carelessness with which he handled his new pipe. "What you working on, Hollister?" he went on with the manner of one old business man to another. Lydia hid a smile. She found him delicious. She began to think how she could make Dr. Melton laugh with her account of Walter the Man. "The lay-out of the new power-house--Elliott-Gridley works in Urbana," answered Paul, in a straightforward, reasonable tone, a little absent. Lydia stopped smiling. It was a tone he had never used to answer any business question she had ever put to him. "I'm figuring on their generators," he went on in explanation. "Big contract?" asked Walter. "Two thousand kilowatt turbo generator," answered Paul. The other whistled. "Whew! I didn't know they had the cash!" "They haven't," said Paul briefly. "Oh, chattel-mortgage?" surmised the other. "Lease-contract," Paul corrected. "That doesn't have to be recorded." "What's the matter with recording it?" "Afraid of their credit. They don't want Dunn's sending all over creation that they've put chattel-mortgages on their equipment, do they?" "No; sure! I see." The boy grasped instantly, with a quick nod, the other's meaning. "Well, that's _one_ way of gettin' 'round it!" he added admiringly after an instant's pause. Lydia had laid down her work and was looking intently at her two companions. At this she gave a stifled exclamation which made the boy turn his head. "Say, Mrs. Hollister, aren't you looking kind of pale this evening?" he asked. "These first hot nights do take it out of a person, don't they? Mr. Hollister ought to take you to Put-in-Bay for a holiday. Momma'd take care of the baby for you and welcome. She's crazy about babies." He was again the overgrown school-boy that Lydia knew. The conversation drifted to indifferent topics. Lydia did not take her usual share in it, and when their caller had gone Paul inquired if she really were exhausted by the heat. "Oh, no," she said; "you know I don't mind the heat." "You didn't say much when Walter was here, and I--" "I was thinking," Lydia broke in. "I was thinking that I couldn't understand a word you and Walter were saying any more than if you were talking Hebrew. I was thinking that that little boy knows more about your business than I do." Paul did not attempt to deny this, but he laughed at her dramatic accent. "Sure, he does! And about how to tie a four-in-hand, and what's the best stud to wear at the back of a collar, and where to buy socks. What's that to you?" Lydia looked at him with quivering, silent lips. He answered, with a little heat: "Why, look-y here, Lydia, suppose I were a doctor. You wouldn't expect to know how many grains of morphine or what d'you call 'em I was going to use in--"