"That's the spirit," says he, clappin' me friendly on the shoulder. "Walter, call in Mr. Marvin."
He was some grand little demonstrator, Mr. Marvin—one of these round-faced, pink-cheeked, chunky built young gents, who was as chummy and as entertainin' from the first handshake as if we'd been room-mates at college. I can't say how well posted he was on what was goin' on in the different departments he hustled me through, but he knew enough to smother me with machinery details.
"Now, here we have a battery of six hogging machines," he'd say. "They cut the gears, you know."
"Oh, yes," I'd say, tryin' to look wise.
It was that way all through the trip. I saw two or three thousand sweaty men in smeared overalls and sleeveless undershirts putterin' around lathes and things that whittled shavings off shiny steel bars, or hammered red-hot chunks of it into different shapes, or bit holes in great sheets of steel. I watched electric cranes the size of trolley cars juggle chunks of metal that weighed tons. I listened to the roar and rattle and crash and bang, and at the end of two hours my head was whirlin' as fast as some of them big belt wheels; and I knew almost as much about what I'd seen as a two-year-old does about the tick-tock daddy holds up to her ear.
Young Mr. Marvin don't seem discouraged, though. He suggests that we drive into town for lunch. We did, in a canary-colored roadster that purred along at about fifty most of the way. We fed at a swell club, along with a bunch of cheerful young lieutenants of industry who didn't seem worried about the high cost of anything. I gathered that most of 'em was in the same line as Mr. Marvin—supplies or munitions. From the general talk, and the casual way they ordered pink cocktails and expensive cigars, I judged it wasn't exactly a losin' game.
Nor they didn't seem anxious about gettin' back to punch in on the time-clocks. About two-thirty we adjourns to the Country Club, and if I'd been a mashie fiend I might have finished a hard day's work with a game of golf. I thought I ought to do some more shops, though. Why, to be sure! But at five we knocked off again, and I was towed to another club, where we had a plunge in a marble pool so as to be in shape for a little dinner Mr. Marvin was gettin' up for me. Quite some dinner! There was a jolly trip out to an amusement park later on. Oh, the Wonder folks were no tightwads when it came to showin' special agents of the Corrugated around.
I tried another day of it before givin' up. It was no use. They had me buffaloed. So I thanked all hands and hinted that maybe I'd better be goin' back. I hope I didn't deceive anyone, for I did go back—to the hotel. But by night I'd invested $11.45 in a second-hand outfit—warranted steam-cleaned—and I had put up $6. more for a week's board with a Swede lady whose front porch faced the ten-foot fence guardin' the Wondor Motors' main plant. Also, Mrs. Petersen had said it was a cinch I could get a job. Her old man would show me where in the mornin'.
And say, mornin' happens early out in places like that. By 5:30 A.M. I could smell bacon grease, and by six-fifteen breakfast was all over and Petersen had lit his corn-cob pipe.
"Coom!" says he in pure Scandinavian.