"And I know two places, the one you work in and the one I work on top of. Do you know, the waste gas that comes out of the top of that stove is strong enough to light a whole town?"
"Goes up into the air, does it?"
"All that doesn't swoop down and suffocate me. I've been asphyxiated every ten minutes since I have been up there."
"I wonder why they don't use the gas for something else?" mused Rush. He lapsed into silence, pondering over this subject all the rest of the way home. This was well, for it made him forget his weariness in a measure. Reaching the widow Brodsky's, Steve was for going to bed without any breakfast, but Bob was so insistent that the boy did sit down to his meal after having taken his bath. Rush ate a fairly nourishing breakfast and after that felt better. This, followed by a refreshing sleep put him in very good condition.
Steve left the house a couple of hours before it was time to go to work. He was still unsteady on his feet, but the color was returning to his face and his wonderful vitality was asserting itself. He would be himself again, in a few hours, if he were out in the open away from the killing heat of the blast furnaces.
The boy wanted to see the furnaces by daylight so, that he might get a better idea of them than was possible in the night. He stopped to witness the work of the day shift as they made a cast. This was very interesting, though a wave of pity welled up in the heart of the Iron Boy for the suffering of the furnace men in the terrific heat to which they were subjected while tapping the furnace.
The cast over, he walked to where the huge black stoves towered above him, and through which the gas flamed and circulated to heat the air that was driven in over the charge in the furnace itself.
The engineer nodded to him.
"Where does the waste gas go to?" asked the Iron Boy.
"Out into the air. Why?"