"Well, Adams," he said, in bis husky, cheerful voice, "how's your glue-works?"
Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that held his hat as if to make a protestive gesture, but failed to carry it out; and his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman, however, seemed to feel that something ought to be said.
"Our glue-works, hell!" he remarked. "I guess we won't have no glue-works over here—not very long, if we got to compete with the sized thing you got over there!"
Lamb chuckled. "I kind of had some such notion," he said. "You see, Virgil, I couldn't exactly let you walk off with it like swallering a pat o' butter, now, could I? It didn't look exactly reasonable to expect me to let go like that, now, did it?"
Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his throat. "Do you—would you step into my office a minute, Mr. Lamb?"
"Why, certainly I'm willing to have a little talk with you," the old gentleman said, as he followed his former employee indoors, and he added, "I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got that up, over yonder, Virgil!"
