She looked at her daughter, who gave a little sob
and ran out of the room.
“What makes my daughter Belle feel bad,”
says the widow, “is, that she had a friend,—well,
it isn’t too much to say that they was as good
as engaged,—and he was foreman of the Foundry
finishin’-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt
him, just as he spoils everything he touches; and last
winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox—that’s
his name, and his head is runnin’ over with
inventions—took to spreein’ and liquor,
and got ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman
to a hand, and is all the while lettin’ down
lower.”
The widow’s heart thus opened, Wade walked in
as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to
him. He was presently installed in the large and
small front-rooms up-stairs, unpacking his traps, and
making himself permanently at home.
Superintendent Whiffler came over, by-and-by, to see
his successor. He did not like his looks.
The new man should have looked mean or weak or rascally,
to suit the outgoer.
“How long do you expect to stay?” asks
Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hanging
a map and a print vis-a-vis.
“Until the men and I, or the Company and I,
cannot pull together.”
“I’ll give you a week to quarrel with
both, and another to see the whole concern go to everlasting
smash. And now, if you’re ready, I’ll
go over the accounts with you and prove it.”
Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a humbug,
if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account
for any failure. But he did not mention this
conviction.
HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA!
At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the safe-key
to Wade, and departed to ruin some other property,
if he could get one to ruin. Wade walked with
him to the gate.
“I’m glad to be out of a sinking ship,”
said the ex-boss. “The Works will go down,
sure as shooting. And I think myself well out
of the clutches of these men. They’re a
bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians.
Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt
safe of my life with ’em.”
“A bad lot, are they?” mused Wade, as
he returned to the office. “I must give
them a little sharp talk by way of Inaugural.”
He had the bell tapped and the men called together
in the main building.
Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic
way.
While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces,
smoke rose from the dusty beds where Titanic castings
were cooling. Great cranes, manacled with heavy
chains, stood over the furnace-doors, ready to lift
steaming jorums of melted metal, and pour out, hot
and hot, for the moulds to swallow.
Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the
fire to ripen it. Here was a stack of long, rough,
rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelabs of the Anakim.
There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying higgledy-piggledy,
stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be
crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much
use in civilization.
