"They won't deliver stiff, wet spoil freely." Stirling's nod was very expressive, in that it suggested that he had expected his companion to locate the cause of trouble.
"You've hit it," he said, and opening the desk took out a little model of an excavator bucket, beautifully made in burnished copper, and another one more rudely fashioned out of bent card.

He handed Weston the former.
"That's a rather famous man's idea," he added, with a little dry smile.

"I had to leave the thing to my secretary when I was west.

I've tried it on the Mule Deer road, and I'm not quite satisfied.

The other's one that I've been thinking over." Weston looked at both the models, and then, taking up the card one, unfolded it, and, after paring part of it away with his knife, bent it into a slightly different shape.
"I think that should meet the purpose.