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"Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some wood," Adams said. "Would the sticks belong to me?"
"He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it," she protested. "What good is it doing him if he
doesn't DO anything with it? What good is it doing ANYBODY? None in the world! And what harm would it
do him if you went ahead and did this for yourself and for your children? None in the world! And what could
he do to you if he WAS old pig enough to get angry with you for doing it? He couldn't do a single thing, and
you've admitted he couldn't, yourself. So what's your reason for depriving your children and your wife of the
benefits you know you could give 'em?"
"Nothing but decency," he answered; and she had her reply ready for that. It seemed to him that, strive as he
would, he could not reach her mind with even the plainest language; while everything that she said to him,
with such vehemence, sounded like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he pressed her with the same
illustration, on the point of ownership, though he thought he was varying it.
"Suppose he hired me to build him a house: would that be MY house?"
"He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell invented----"
"Look here: suppose you give a cook a soup-bone and some vegetables, and pay her to make you a soup: has
she got a right to take and sell it? You know better!"
"I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own invention from you he's no better than a robber!"
They never found any point of contact in all their passionate discussions of this ethical question; and the
question was no more settled between them, now that Adams had succumbed, than it had ever been. But at
least the wrangling about it was over: they were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness prevailed
with her as much as with him.
He had already been out of the house, to walk about the small green yard; and on Monday afternoon he sent
for a taxicab and went down-town, but kept a long way from the "wholesale section," where stood the
formidable old oblong pile of Lamb and Company. He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away,
and for placing a mortgage upon his house; and on his way home, after five o'clock, he went to see an old
friend, a man whose term of service with Lamb and Company was even a little longer than his own.
This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front of the apartment house where he lived, but
when the cab stopped at the curb he rose and came forward, offering a jocular greeting. "Well, well, Virgil
Adams! I always thought you had a sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired private automobile
nowadays, do you? Pamperin' yourself because you're still layin' off sick, I expect."
CHAPTER XVI 107
"Oh, I'm well enough again, Charley Lohr," Adams said, as he got out and shook hands. Then, telling the
driver to wait, he took his friend's arm, walked to the bench with him, and sat down. "I been practically well
for some time," he said. "I'm fixin' to get into harness again."
"Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you," his friend laughed. "You're the last man I ever
expected to see blowin' yourself--or anybody else to a taxicab! For that matter, I never heard of you bein' in
ANY kind of a cab, 'less'n it might be when you been pall-bearer for somebody. What's come over you?"
"Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact," Adams said. "I got a lot to do, and the only way to
accomplish it, it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on while I'm doing it."
"What you talkin' about? What you got to do except to get strong enough to come back to the old place?"
"Well----" Adams paused, then coughed, and said slowly, "Fact is, Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely I
wouldn't come back."
"What! What you talkin' about?"
"No," said Adams. "I been thinking I might likely kind of branch out on my own account."
"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Old Charley Lohr was amazed; he ruffled up his gray moustache with thumb and
forefinger, leaving his mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled wintry thicket. "Why, that's the
doggonedest thing I ever heard!" he said. "I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but if you go, there
won't be anybody else of the old generation at all. What on earth you thinkin' of goin' into?"
"Well," said Adams, "I rather you didn't mention it till I get started of course anybody'll know what it is by
then--but I HAVE been kind of planning to put a liquid glue on the market."
His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, stared at him in frowning perplexity. "Glue?" he said.
"GLUE!"
"Yes. I been sort of milling over the idea of taking up something like that."
"Handlin' it for some firm, you mean?"
"No. Making it. Sort of a glue-works likely."
Lohr continued to frown. "Let me think," he said. "Didn't the ole man have some such idea once, himself?"
Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he coughed again before he spoke. "Well, yes. Fact is, he did.
That is to say, a mighty long while ago he did."
"I remember," said Lohr. "He never said anything about it that I know of; but seems to me I recollect we had
sort of a rumour around the place how you and that man--le's see, wasn't his name Campbell, that died of
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