"
He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
incredible!" she exclaimed. "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a
machine nine hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then,
after a keen glance at his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD
have been a 'bad hand at it'!"
He laughed ruefully. "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
"How often is that?"
"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
than one a second."
"And you're close to it?"
"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more
gaily. "The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with
me. I have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I
flinch and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't
get over it. I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll
be glad to see me back.
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