out of its elbow and rolled it forward. “We are supposed to be doing hydraulic work now, and the jet I’m using is the size of this one.” He pulled out a measure and laid it over the lip. “Seven and three-quarter inches. It should be five and a half. How much pressure do you think we lose when the things are worn to that size?”
Ormond’s flannel shirt was dirty; it was loose at the sunburnt neck, and his trousers were tucked anyhow into the long boots. But the two fat directors were nervous. The Lion did not look at all the same, laid nakedly here on the creek bed with a hard-eyed man standing over her to crush them with figures. Ormond had an unpleasantly virile grasp of his subject.
“Well, well!” said the chief of the directors. “I daresay we can manage a new jet for you. But you are asking for pipes; a quarter-mile of pipes; twenty-one foot pipes at six pounds apiece! We can’t let you have those, you know. And you got some steel things without consulting us———”
“I had to have them. The plate topping the lift pipe was nearly worn through. I’d asked you twice.”
“My son said that you had the box too close on the escape,” said the elder Kiliat, wisely.
Ormond bit off the word that tingled has tongue.
