"So they should!" answered the young bookkeeper. "You have been on a ranch then?" "We have just come from one," Donald answered. "Have you, indeed! It is a free life--not much like being shut up inside brick walls." "You have been West yourself, perhaps," ventured Thornton. "Yes, years ago--when I was a boy; but not recently." "Ah, you should see the sheep country now!" Thornton went on. "It is much improved, I reckon, since you were there." "I imagine so," the young guide answered with a wistful smile. "It is so long since I have had a breath of real air that I have almost forgotten how it would seem." "If you are wanting fresh air go out on the ranges and fill your lungs. You will find plenty there," declared the ranchman. "That is just what they are trying to make me do," the young man replied, "I have not been very well this year and Mr. Munger thinks the confinement in the mill is telling on me. He wants me to go West for a vacation." "And should you like to?" questioned Donald. The man did not answer; instead he said: "Suppose we go on. We must not waste too much time here. In this next room you will see how the dyeing is done. We use centrifugal machines, and beside those we have these others to keep the wool spread and turned. With all our care not to snarl or curl it, it will get matted and must therefore be picked apart again. So we pass it through these revolving drums which, you see, have sets of spikes on them; as the spikes on the different drums turn they catch in the wool and pick it all apart so it is again light and fluffy as it was before." "Doesn't so much washing and dyeing take out all the yolk, and make the wool very dry?" inquired Thornton. The young man conducting them seemed pleased at the question. "Yes, it does! That is just the trouble. Therefore we are forced to set about getting some oil back into it; otherwise it would be so harsh and stiff that we could do nothing with it. So we put the thin layers of wool into these machines and carry them along to a spraying apparatus which sprays them evenly with oil. We use olive oil, but some other manufacturers prefer lard oil or oleine." "How funny to have to put oil back into the wool after you have just washed it out!" Donald remarked. "It is funny, isn't it?" nodded the bookkeeper. "Now on this side of the room they are blending the fleeces. Sometimes we blend different qualities of wool to get a desired effect, or sometimes we blend the wool with cotton or a different fiber. We take a thin layer of wool, then put another layer of a different kind over it. We then pick it all up together until we get a uniform mixture." "It is a surprise to me that the wool has to go through so much red tape before it comes to spinning," Thornton said. "It is a long process," responded their guide. "I remember when I first saw it, it seemed endless. Now I think little of it."