Bonbright pondered this. "The men think I may be their friend?"

"Some saw you last night, and some heard you talk to Dulac. Most of
them have heard about it now."

"That was it?... Thank you, Mr. Hooper."

Bonbright went up to his office, where he stood at the window,
looking down upon the thickening stream of men as the minute for the
starting whistle approached. ... So he was of some importance, in the
eyes of the workingmen, at least! They saw hope in his friendship.
... He shrugged his shoulders. What could his friendship do for them?
He was impotent to help or harm. Bitterly he thought that if the men
wanted friendship that would be worth anything to them, they should
cultivate his dead forbears.

Presently he turned to his desk and wrote some personal letters--as a
distraction. He did not know what else to do. There was nothing
connected with the plant that he could set his hand to. It seemed to
him he was just present, like a blank wall, whose reason for
existence was merely to be in a certain place.

He was conscious of voices in his father's room, and after a time his
father entered and bade him a formal good morning. Bonbright was
acutely conscious of his father's distinguished, cultured,
aristocratic appearance. He was conscious of that manner which six
generations of repression and habit in a circumscribed orbit had
bestowed on Bonbright Foote VI. Bonbright was unconscious of the
great likeness between him and his father; of the fact that at his