"Good-luck?—no, not exactly, although I shouldn't wonder if it had brought us good-luck. As for the witches, you see yourself it don't keep off the most dangerous kind—the young and beautiful ones," replied George, with an attempt to be gallant.
"Oh thank you, Mr. Gildersleeve; you're very flattering indeed," replied Edna with a smile.
"I wouldn't take five hundred dollars for that horse-shoe, Miss Heath," resumed George proudly.
"Indeed," said Edna.
"No, nor a thousand. That there shoe that you see there, came off Gineral George Washington's horse just afore he fought the great battle of Trenton. My grandfather shod him anew himself, and kept this old shoe. The forge was right here, and that chimney-stack was part of it. That's the story, Miss Heath; and at that time your great-grandfather, old Whitman Obershaw, ran a saw-mill just along by the head of the rapids, ten rods beyond the foot-bridge, and I've heard my father say often enough that the old man was a pretty hard case, and tight about half the time."
Edna, though nettled and confused for a moment at these free reflections on her maternal ancestor, could not refrain from smiling at the unconcerned way in which they were imparted.
"To think how you've grown lately, Miss Heath," continued the blunt iron-master; "why, it seems to me but last week that you and Ada Mumbie and Judge Hull's granddaughter, were little bits of things, stopping, as you came from school with your arms full of books, to peep in at the foundry, half-scared, with your eyes as big as saucers. Well, time passes, and things change, and the Works are different now from what they was then. We've enlarged them considerable. Have you been through them lately? No—well, would you like to go? Without bragging a great deal, I don't think we can be beat much in our line in the world." George's world, by the bye, was bounded by New York and Trenton, and consisted chiefly of Belton.
Edna said she had been in Mr. Mumbie's paper-mill, and had been much interested, and thought she would like to see the Works, if convenient.
The establishment was a model one of its kind. In extent and completeness it had no superior, if a rival, in the country, and the owner took a justifiable pride in showing it. It covered several acres, and the buildings were fine ones of brick, with slate roofs, and some pretensions to architectural beauty. Gildersleeve led Edna first to a detached room well lighted, neat, and quiet as a boudoir, with a vine trailing over the glass roof. This was the engine-room, where tireless monsters of polished steel and brass, with gigantic fly-wheels and darting pistons, worked noiselessly and exactly as a chronometer, and enabled the proprietor to be consistently independent of the water-power if he chose.
Then they went to the foundry—a fearful place, where begrimed men, hideous in the glare of furnace flames, ran dragging pots of molten iron like Cyclops, while the ground trembled beneath the titanic blows of trip-hammers; next to the boiler-shop, where Edna was almost deafened; and to the machine-shop, a long room filled with whirling shafts, gearing, and lathes innumerable, where she was greatly amazed at the wonderful planes that sliced off glossy ribbons of steel, and the powerful shears and punches that cut the tough metal like pasteboard. Edna was much impressed by what she saw. She was struck with the many evidences around her of human skill and power. The admirable adaptation and complete control of superhuman forces seemed to her sublime, and she wondered that the presiding genius of such a marvellous palace of art could be the ordinary mortal beside her. Had Edna been an older judge of human nature, she would have discovered that George Gildersleeve was anything but an ordinary man. True, he was uneducated, rough, overweeningly vain, without tact; his fibre coarse and vigorous as a buffalo's, but his tenacity of will, love of order, vigilance, and business shrewdness were remarkable, and capable of conquering success in almost any department of life. His vigilance and love of order had not escaped Edna's notice, for as they went along, she remarked that his searching glances were directed everywhere, and she was amused to see him pick up a nail from the floor, and at another time reprimand an apprentice severely because a small bit of cotton waste had been left on the bright oil-cloth of the engine-room.