"Well, sir, can you finish this job and have steam up here on the first of January?"
The Englishman blushed, for he was embarrassed, and glanced at the wood boss. Then, sweeping the almost empty shop with his eye, he said something about a foreman who was in charge of the work. "Damn the foreman," said the stranger; "I'm talking to you."
The young man blushed again, and said he could work twelve or fourteen hours a day for a time if it were necessary, but he didn't like to make any rash promises about the general result.
"Now look here," said the well-dressed man, "I want you to take charge of this job and finish it; employ as many men as you can handle, and blow a whistle here on New Year's morning—do you understand?"
The Englishman thought he did, but he could hardly believe it. He glanced at the wood boss, and the wood boss nodded his head.
"I shall do my best," said the Englishman, taking courage, "but I should like to know who gives these orders."
"I'm the General Manager," said the man; "now get a move on you," and he turned and walked out.
It is not to be supposed that the General Manager saw anything remarkable about the young man, save that he was six feet and had a good face. The fact is, the wood foreman had boomed the Englishman's stock before the Manager saw him.
The path of the Englishman was not strewn with flowers for the next few months. Any number of men who had been on the road when he was in the English navy-yards felt that they ought to have had this little promotion. The local foremen along the line saw in the young Englishman the future foreman of the new shops, and no man went out of his way to help the stranger. But in spite of all obstacles, the shop grew from day to day, from week to week; so that as the old year drew to a close the machinery was getting into place. The young foreman, while a hard worker, was always pleasant in his intercourse with the employees, and in a little while he had hosts of friends. There is always a lot of extra work at the end of a big job, and now when Christmas came there was still much to do. The men worked night and day. The boiler that was to come from Chicago had been expected for some time. Everything was in readiness, and it could be set up in a day; but it did not come. Tracer-letters that had gone after it were followed by telegrams; finally it was located in a wreck out in a cornfield in Illinois on the last day of the year.
A great many of the officials were away, and the service was generally demoralized during the holidays, so that the appropriation for which the Englishman was working at M. had for the moment been forgotten; the shops were completed, the machinery was in, but there was no boiler to boil water to make steam.