He may have known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
"You do that all day long ?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems incredible!" she exclaimed.

"YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine nine hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then, after a keen glance at his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad hand at it'!" He laughed ruefully.

"I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say it.

You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle." "How often is that ?" "The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more than one a second." "And you're close to it ?" "Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more gaily.

"The others don't mind.