"I'm glad your train was on time," bustled Mrs. Snedden. "Luncheon will be ready in a few moments now."
We had barely time to look about before Gertrude led us into the dining-room and introduced us to the other boarders.
Knowing human nature, Kennedy was careful to be struck with admiration and amazement at everything we had seen in our brief whirl through Nitropolis. It was not a difficult or entirely assumed feeling, either, when one realized that, only a few short months before, the region had been nothing better than an almost hopeless wilderness of scrub-pines.
We did not have to wait long before the subject uppermost in our minds was brought up—the explosions.
Among the boarders there were at least two who, from the start, promised to be interesting as well as important. One was a tall, slender chap named Garretson, whose connection with the company, I gathered from the conversation, took him often on important matters to New York. The other was an older man, Jackson, who seemed to be connected with the management of the works, a reticent fellow, more given to listening to others than to talking himself.
"Nothing has happened so far to-day, anyhow," remarked Garretson, tapping the back of his chair with his knuckle, as a token of respect for that evil spirit who seems to be exorcised by knocking wood.
"Oh," exclaimed Gertrude, with a little half-suppressed shudder, "I do hope those terrible explosions are at last over!"
"If I had my way," asserted Garretson, savagely, "I'd put this town under martial law until they WERE over."
"It may come to that," put in Jackson, quietly.
"Quite in keeping with the present tendency of the age," agreed
Snedden, in a tone of philosophical disagreement.