"Hullo, yards, send up Tommy Gould to the office. I want him to help me.
I don't give a damn for the scaling. You'll have to get along somehow.
The five of you ought to hold that down. Send up Gould, anyhow." He
slammed up the receiver, muttering something about incompetence. Bob for
a moment had a strong impulse to retort, but his anger died. He saw that
Collins was not for the moment thinking of him at all as a human being,
as a personality--only as a piece of this great, swiftly moving machine,
that would not run smoothly. The fact that he had come under Fox's
convoy evidently meant nothing to the little bookkeeper, at least for
the moment. Collins was entirely accustomed to hiring and discharging
men. When transplanted to the frontier industries, even such automatic
jobs as bookkeeping take on new duties and responsibilities.

Bob, after a moment of irresolution, reached for his hat.

"That will be all, then?" he asked.

Collins came out of the abstraction into which he had fallen.

"Oh--yes," he said. "Sorry, but of course we can't take chances on these
things being right."

"Of course not," said Bob steadily.

"You just need more training," went on Collins with some vague idea of
being kind to this helpless, attractive young fellow. "I learned under
Harry Thorpe that results is all a man looks at in this business."

"I guess that's right," said Bob. "Good-bye."