FELIX BAUER sat at his bench in the electrical machine shop at Burrton
just about to open a letter which had been left there late in the
afternoon. The shop men sometimes brought one another's mail up from the
village and Bauer, who often worked at his task without going out to
tea, was glad to get his occasional letters before he finished his bench
work late into the night.
Bauer's mail was not very frequent nor very heavy. After that vacation
at the Douglas home, he had come back to Burrton and plunged into the
work in a vain endeavour to forget Helen Douglas. He did not forget her
in the least and did not try to pretend that he ever could. He had never
ventured to ask if he might write to her, but Mrs. Douglas had dropped a
friendly note now and then for which he was grateful and Paul had sent
him a copy of Heine, which Bauer had admired on the library shelves at
Milton.
The only additional letters he received were those which belonged to his
correspondence with the people in Washington who were interested in his
electrical patent. The circular glass incubator was finally completed, and Bauer had experimented on it to such satisfaction that it was a common joke with the boy that Bauer's electrical chickens were so thick they ate up all the currents in the shop.
Bauer could afford to take all the criticism, even the caustic remarks
of Anderson the foreman, because it began to look now very much as if
the stubborn, dogged, plodding German were on the road to financial
success. He had been through the regular struggles necessary to make his
model and get his patent. But he had finally succeeded in all the
preliminary stages, his model was in the patent office, and he had even
begun to receive letters from two or three manufacturing firms about
putting the incubator on the market.
He was totally inexperienced in this business and needed much counsel
from older heads. Anderson the foreman finally saw that Bauer had really
invented a very valuable article and he came to his assistance in the
final correspondence over the patent, but Bauer had some reluctance
about sharing with him the correspondence over the actual manufacture
and sale of the incubators, because of Anderson's unfortunate habit of
antagonising the shop men in various matters. He had never been able to
overcome a general distrust on the part of the students, and Bauer
shared that distrust so keenly that he did not feel willing to risk any
great amount of confidence in him.
Since his return from Milton, Bauer had brooded over money matters. A
small inheritance from his grandfather's estate in Lausbrachen had
helped him through school, and his living wants were so few that he had
not suffered any from privations which most of the rich men's sons at
Burrton would have considered absolutely impossible.