Y friend, Mr. Murphy,” said Billy, one night after supper, when he and Uncle John were sitting side by side on the steps.
“Did I understand?” interrupted Uncle John, “Mr. Murphy?”
“Yes,” answered Billy, “Mr. Thomas Murphy the timekeeper.”
“Exactly,” said Uncle John.
“Mr. Murphy,” Billy went on, “says that iron moves the world.”
“I should say,” said Uncle John, deliberately, “that power generally has to be put into an iron harness before anything can move; but Mr. Murphy evidently knows what he is talking about.”
“He says,” continued Billy, “that iron mills are very important places; and that, for his part, he’s glad that he works in an iron mill.”
“That’s the way every man ought to feel about his work,” said Uncle John; “all the work in the world has to be done by somebody.”
That remark sounded to Billy as if another motto might be coming; and, being tired, he wanted just to be social. So he said:
“Uncle John, did you ever see Miss King, the stenographer?”
“Only coming and going,” he answered.
“She’s a friend of mine, too,” said Billy. “She told me, to-day, that she wants me always to feel that she is my friend.”
“Everything going all right in the office, Billy?” asked Uncle John, quickly.
“Oh, yes,” answered Billy, with a little note of happiness in his voice. “She told me that so as to make me feel comfortable. She’s the loveliest woman I ever saw. Don’t you think, Uncle John, that yellow-brown is the prettiest color for hair?”
“I do,” said Uncle John, emphatically. Then, rising to go into the house, he added, “That’s exactly what I used to call Aunt Mary’s hair, yellow-brown.”
“Oh!” said Billy wonderingly. Then it was time for him to go to bed; but he lingered a moment to look at Aunt Mary’s hair that was dark brown, now, where it wasn’t gray. There was something in his “Good-night, Aunt Mary,” that made her look up from her paper as she said:
“Good-night, William Wallace.”
Anybody can see that William Wallace is a hard name for a boy to go to bed on. It was so hard for Billy that it almost hurt; but Billy had lived with Aunt Mary long enough to be sure that she meant to be a true friend.
Whether or not Mr. Prescott was his friend, Billy did not know. Mr. Murphy had told him one day when he was out by the door, waiting for the postman, that Mr. Prescott was a friend to every man in the mill. Billy supposed that every man was a friend back again. At any rate he knew that he was; and he hoped that, some day, he would be able to do something, just to show Mr. Prescott how much he liked him.
The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t seem possible that such a hope as that could ever come true.
But anybody who liked anybody else as much as he liked Mr. Prescott couldn’t help seeing that something bothered him. So Billy had a little secret with himself to try to look specially pleasant when Mr. Prescott came in from a trip around the mill. He had begun to think that Mr. Prescott had given up springing questions on him when, one very warm afternoon, Mr. Prescott looked up from his desk and said:
“William, if you were to have an afternoon off, what would you do?”
“I’d rather than anything else in the world,” answered Billy promptly, “go out into the country.”
“That being hardly feasible,” said Mr. Prescott, “what else would you rather do?”
“Next to that,” answered Billy, “I’d rather go into the foundry to see Uncle John work.”
“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Prescott, whirling around in his chair. “That’s about the last thing that I should have thought of, especially on such a hot day. May I inquire whether you are interested in iron?”
Billy, with a quick flash of spirit, answered promptly, “I am, sir.”
As promptly Mr. Prescott said, “I’m glad to hear it, William. You may spend the rest of the afternoon in the foundry.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Billy, very much surprised. Then he looked at Miss King, and she nodded and smiled.
Billy ran down the corridor, passing Mr. Murphy with a flying salute, and hurried across the yard to the foundry door.
Just then he remembered that he hadn’t a permit; but the foreman appeared in the door saying, “The super has telephoned over that you’re to visit us this afternoon.”
Pointing across the room, he added, “Your uncle is over there.”
Billy wanted to surprise his Uncle John, so he went carefully along the outer side of the long, low room, past pile after pile of gray black sand, until he came to the place where Uncle John was bending over what seemed to be a long bar of sand.
“Uncle John,” he said softly.
“Why, Billy, my lad!” exclaimed he, looking up with so much surprise in his face that Billy said quickly:
“It’s all right, Uncle John. Mr. Prescott sent me to watch you work.”
“Things,” said Uncle John, with a smile that made wrinkles around his eyes, “generally come round right if you wait for them.”
“What is that?” asked Billy, pointing at the bar.
“That is a mold for a lathe,” answered Uncle John. “I’m nearly through with it, then I’m going to help out on corn cutters. We have a rush order on corn canning machines. You’d better sit on that box till I’m through.”
Billy looked at the tiny trowel in Uncle John’s hand, and saw him take off a little sand in one place, and put some on in another, until the mold was smooth and even. Then he tested his corners with what he called a “corner slick.”
“I never supposed that you worked that way,” said Billy, “but Miss King told me that molders are artists in sand.”
“Did she, though?” said Uncle John, straightening up to take a final look at his work. “I’ll remember that.
“Now we’ll go over where they are working on the corn cutters. It’s a little cooler on that side.”
“Where does black sand come from?” asked Billy.
“It’s yellow,” answered his uncle, “when we begin to use it, but the action of the hot iron, as we use it, over and over, turns it black.”
Then came the work that Billy had waited so long to see.
Uncle John took a wooden frame—he called it a drag—which was about two feet square and not quite so deep. He put it on a bench high enough for him to work easily. Then he laid six cutters for a corn canning machine, side by side, in the bottom of the box.
“Those,” he said, “are patterns.”
Taking a sieve—a riddle—he filled it with moist sand which he sifted over the cutters. Next, with his fingers, he packed the sand carefully around the patterns. Then, with a shovel, he filled the drag with sand, and rammed it down with a wooden rammer until the drag was full.
“Now,” said he, taking up a wire, “I am going to make some vent holes, so the steam can escape.”
When that was done, he clamped a top on the box, turned it over, and took out the bottom.
Billy could see the cutters, bedded firm in the sand.
Blowing off the loose sand with bellows, and smoothing the sand around the pattern, Uncle John took some dry sand, which he sifted through his fingers, blowing it off where it touched the cutters.
“This sand,” he said, “will keep the two parts of the mold from sticking together.”
HE FILLED IT WITH MOIST SAND
Then he took another frame, a cope, which was like the first, except that it had pins on the sides, where the other had sockets. Slipping the pins into the sockets, he fastened them together.
Taking two round, tapering plugs of wood, he set them firmly in the sand, at each end of the patterns.
“One of those,” said he, “will make a place for the hot iron to go in, and the other for it to rise up on the other side.”
Then he filled the second box as he had the first, and made more vent holes.
“Billy,” he said, suddenly, “where are those corn cutters?”
“In the middle of the box,” answered Billy promptly, just as if he had always known about molding in sand.
“Now,” said Uncle John, “comes the artist part.”
Lifting the second part off the first, he turned it over carefully and set it on the bench.
“There they are,” exclaimed Billy.
“There they are,” said Uncle John, with a smile, “but there they are not going to remain.”
Dipping a sponge in water, he wet the sand around the edges of the pattern. Then he screwed a draw spike into the middle of the pattern and rapped it gently with a mallet to loosen it from the sand.
“Pretty nearly perfect, aren’t they?” he said, when he had them all safely out. “Now for some real artist work.”
With a lifter he took out the sand that had fallen into the mold, patched a tiny break here and there, and tested the corners.
Last of all he made grooves, which he called “gates,” between the patterns, and also at the ends where the iron was to be poured in.
Then he clamped the two boxes together. “Now the holes are in the middle,” said he, “and I hope that they will stay there till the iron is poured in.”
Billy, sitting on a box, watched Uncle John till he had finished another set of molds.
“That all clear so far?” asked Uncle John.
“Sure,” answered Billy.
“Think you could do it yourself?” broke in a heavy voice.
Billy, looking up, saw the foreman, who had been watching Billy while he watched his uncle.
“I think I know how,” answered Billy.
“If you won’t talk to the men,” said the foreman, “you may walk around the foundry until we are ready to pour.”
So Billy walked slowly around the long foundry. He saw that each man had his own pile of sand, but the piles were growing very small, because the day’s work was nearly over. The molds were being put in rows for the pouring.
He had walked nearly back to his Uncle John when he happened to step in a hollow place in the earth floor and, losing his balance, fell against a man who was carrying a mold.
With a strange, half-muttered expression the man pushed his elbow against Billy and almost threw him down.
Billy, looking up into a pair of fierce black eyes that glared at him from under a mass of coal black hair, turned so pale that William Wallace then and there called him a coward.
As fast as his feet would carry him Billy went back to Uncle John, who, still busy with his molds, said:
“Go out behind the foundry and look in at the window to see us pour.”
Billy, for the first time in his life thoroughly frightened, was glad to go out into the open air.
Then he went to the window opposite the great cupola to wait for the pouring.
There at the left of the furnace door stood the foundry foreman, tall and strong, holding a long iron rod in his hand. He, too, was waiting.
Then, because Billy had thought and thought over what Uncle John had told him about pouring, his mind began to make a picture; and when sparks of fire from the spout shot across the foundry, the cupola became a fiery dragon and the foreman a noble knight, bearing a long iron spear.
Only once breathed the dragon; for the knight, heedless of danger, closed the iron mouth with a single thrust of his spear.
Another wait. This time the knight forced the dragon to open his mouth, and the yielding dragon sent out his pointed, golden tongue.
But only for a moment; for again the knight thrust in his iron spear.
At last the knight gave way to the dragon.
Then, wonder of wonders, from the dragon’s mouth there came a golden, molten stream.
When the great iron ladle below was almost filled, the knight closed once more the dragon’s mouth.
Two by two came men bearing between them long-handled iron ladles. The great ladle swung forward, for a moment, on its tilting gear, and the men bore away their ladles filled with iron that the great dragon had changed from its own dull gray to the brilliant yellow of gold.
The molds, as they were filled, smoked from all their venting places, till, to his picture, Billy added a place for a battle-field.
By the time that the last molds were filled, some of the men began to take off the wooden frames, and there the iron was, gray again, but, this time, shaped for the use of man.
“See,” said Uncle John, coming to the window, “there are our corn cutters. Came out pretty well, didn’t they?”
“Wasn’t it great!” exclaimed Billy.
“Just about as wonderful every time,” said Uncle John.
“What do they do next?” asked Billy.
“Make new heaps of sand—every man his own heap—and in the morning, after the castings have been carried into the mill, they begin all over again.”
“I’m so glad I saw it,” said Billy, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction.
That night he told Aunt Mary about what he had seen. And he thought about it almost until he fell asleep. Almost, but not quite; for, just as he was dozing off, William Wallace said:
“You were frightened—frightened. You showed a white feather!”
Half asleep as he was, Billy, tired of William Wallace’s superior airs, roused himself long enough to say: “We’ll see who has white feathers.”
