“Yes; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit to-day; but I could not do much with my dull old skates.”

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday morning allowed, and then walked down to the Foundry.  There would be no work done to-day, except by a small gang keeping up the fires.  The Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi-Annual Report an hour’s polishing, before he joined all Dunderbunk on the ice.

It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, “Peace on earth, good-will to men.”  The air was electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to the snowy mountains opposite.

“I wish I were Rembrandt, to paint this grand shadowy interior,” thought Wade, as he entered the silent, deserted Foundry.  “With the gleam of the snow in my eyes, it looks deliciously warm and chiaroscuro.  When the men are here and ’fervet opus,’—­the pot boils,—­I cannot stop to see the picturesque.”

He opened his office, took his Report and began to complete it with ,s, ;s, and .s in the right places.

All at once the bell of the Works rang out loud and clear.  Presently the Superintendent became aware of a tramp and a bustle in the building.  By-and-by came a tap at the office-door.

“Come in,” said Wade, and, enter young Perry Purtett.

Perry was a boy of fifteen, with hair the color of fresh sawdust, white eyebrows, and an uncommonly wide-awake look.  Ringdove, his father’s successor, could never teach Perry the smirk, the grace, and the seductiveness of the counter, so the boy had found his place in the finishing-shop of the Foundry.

“Some of the hands would like to see you for half a jiff, Mr. Wade,” said he.  “Will you come along, if you please?”

There was a good deal of easy swagger about Perry, as there is always in boys and men whose business is to watch the lunging of steam-engines.  Wade followed him.  Perry led the way with a jaunty air that said,—­

“Room here!  Out of the way, you lubberly bits of cast-iron!  Be careful, now, you big derricks, or I’ll walk right over you!  Room now for Me and My suite!”

This pompous usher conducted the Superintendent to the very spot in the main room of the Works where, six months before, the Inaugural had been pronounced and the first Veto spoken and enacted.

And there, as six months before, stood the Hands awaiting their Head.  But the aprons, the red shirts, and the grime of working-days were off, and the whole were in holiday rig,—­as black and smooth and shiny from top to toe as the members of a Congress of Undertakers.

Wade, following in the wake of Perry, took his stand facing the rank, and waited to see what he was summoned for.  He had not long to wait.

To the front stepped Mr. William Tarbox, foreman of the finishing-shop, no longer a boy, but an erect, fine-looking fellow, with no nitrate in his moustache, and his hat permanently out of mourning for the late Mr. Poole.