brought him to a region of smoking chimneys, blast furnaces and grimy, squatty brick factory buildings. It was the noon hour, and sweaty, sooty men, with exposed hairy chests roamed the streets. Harold felt rather small and timid as he passed them on his way from the trolley to the Thatcher Works. As he turned a corner, he read the name he was seeking on a plaque set in the darkened brick cornerstone of probably the most uninviting-looking of all the factories in the neighborhood. It was sprawled over two blocks. Blast furnace fires were belching. Cranes were clanging. Bells were ringing. A donkey engine wheezed and puffed at its job of pushing flat cars around. A haze of bituminous coal smoke hung in the air. Harold stopped at a door into the glass of which was stuck a placard reading: "Office. Unless You Have Business Here—Keep Out!"
It had long been a secret grievance of Henry Lamb's that, though all of his wife's folks had money, they had never made any overtures to share it with him. Not that he would have accepted any of it if they had. But still it was only common decency that some sort of arrangement should have been suggested. He was an excellent bookkeeper. Why had, for instance, not Peter Thatcher made hini head of the accounting department
