Burns turned. "Leave a pitcher of milk on the table for me,
Cynthia," he said in a gentler voice than Chester had yet
heard from him tonight, crisp though it was. "Nothing else."

Chester, catching a glimpse of a brightly lighted dining-room
and a table lavishly spread, undertook to remonstrate. He had
seen the housekeeper's disappointed face, also. But Burns cut
him short.

"Come along - if you must," said he, and stalked out into the
night.

For an hour, in the light from one of the Green Imp's lamps,
Chester sat on an overturned box and watched Burns work. He
worked savagely, as if applying surgical measures to a mood as
well as to a machine. He worked like a skilled mechanic as
well; every turn of a nut, every polish of a thread meaning
definite means to an end. The night was hot and he had thrown
off coat and collar and rolled his sleeves high, so a brawny
arm gleamed in the bright lamplight, and the open shirt
exposed a powerful neck. Chester, who was of slighter build
and not as tall as he would have liked to be, watched
enviously.

"Whatever goes wrong with your affairs, Red," he observed
suddenly, breaking a long interval during which the engine had
been made to throb and whirl like the "ten thousand furies" to
whom its engineer had lately made allusion, "you have the
tremendous asset of a magnificent body to fall back on for
comfort."