Suzanna turned her dark eyes upon the boy. "It was a big one, and maybe fun to watch," she said, "but it burned all the people's homes. We've got two little children, at our house. We could never find their father and mother."
Mr. Bartlett, occupying the corner of a lounge, shifted uneasily. Evidently to put forth truths so baldly was inartistic.
"My mother says it was--I can't think of the word--but she meant it was lucky those cottages were burned down; they were so dirty." Suzanna went on: "And babies played in the yards in ashes and old papers. I always hurried past when I went that way because something stopped inside of me, I felt so sorry for those babies." Suzanna paused. "I just thought as we walked up your front path how different everything is here; your front yard is so clean, and there's so much room!"
She stopped again. She wished Mr. Bartlett would speak. He must guess now all that she meant to convey to him; all she would ask of him.
But still he didn't answer. "The Eagle Man owned those houses," she said at last.
"The Eagle Man?" Mr. Bartlett roused himself at last. "Who is the Eagle Man?"
"Mr. Massey other people call him. The Eagle Man's my own private name for him."
Graham knew his father was heavily interested in the Massey Steel Mills. But he did not speak.
"You know, it's an awful fine feeling you get when you're doing something for strangers," Suzanna pressed on. "Some way you don't feel so excited when you're doing something for your very own family."
But she was doomed to disappointment. A continued silence still greeted her words. "When people work for you isn't it as though you were their father or their big brother and had to help them when they needed it?" she asked, at length.
"Well, it's a new thought that you owe anything to the men who work for you except their wages," said Mr. Bartlett at last.
"Why, Drusilla told me that everyone in the world has a little silver chain running from his wrist to his next friend's wrist; it stretches when you run--a fellowship link my father named it when I told him. And the chain runs from my wrist to your wrist and from yours to every other wrist in the world." She leaned closer, finishing earnestly. "And Drusilla says if you break your chain you're really a slave."