"You'll find out whether I did or not, if——"
"Look here, pard, if you get funny I'll put you in with the coke and the—the limestone. I'll bet they'd never get the impurities out of the iron after you once got in it. It would be pig forever afterwards. Ha, ha! How's that?"
"You're too fresh, that's what's the matter with you," growled the charging boy. "Git busy here; I'm going down. I don't belong up here anyway, and I'm glad of it."
"Don't say that," protested Jarvis, with mock seriousness. "It is a matter of sincere regret to me that this isn't your regular job. I'd just as lief be down on the ground carrying water, as up here feeding the mouth of the furnace. The boss monkey down below said you were to show me what to do."
With a grunt of disapproval the charging boy instructed Jarvis in his duties, then with a "so-long," hurried down the ladder, leaving the Iron Boy alone in his glory.
Bob glanced about him curiously. Directly over his head, it seemed, flared the flames from the huge stove. Every now and then the great flame would swoop down a fiery tongue as if bent upon lapping him up. Bob instinctively ducked as the breeze carried the flame down toward him. He believed that a gust of wind would surely bring the flame on him, which he was certain would be the end of Bob Jarvis.
Off to the right and to the left of him were other swaying pillars of fire from the stoves of the other furnaces, and over on the opposite side of the river black smoke and red fire poured from the funnels of the open-hearth furnaces there. Bob himself was enveloped in a dense cloud of suffocating smoke, which, breathed into his lungs, set him coughing and choking.
"I wish I had stayed fired!" he muttered. "This is worse than the cinder pits."