Under Damian they would not have existed; the apprenticeship floor had been the first thing he cut, because training the young returns nothing this quarter and he lived entirely in this quarter.

Watching them now — awkward, bright, arguing about propulsion tolerances over sheet cake — I felt the particular satisfaction my mother must have felt, the satisfaction of capital doing the one thing she always insisted was its only honest purpose, which is to build.

The applause had been warm.

But I will tell you honestly that the applause was not the thing.

The thing was the quiet underneath it — the knowledge, carried home alone through the cool night afterward, that the house was built on a foundation that would hold.