Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown,
varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet
sage. "He hugged me," she told him; "I was quite breathless. It was in a
hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?" There was
nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her shoulder. He
had a new kinship with Caroline; Howat now understood her tempest of
feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.
Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
which London limited the Province's industries.
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