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Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it. All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously frozen, and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett's. Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap'n Ambuster's skiff.
It was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk Foundry. The Superintendent had come back with his pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic, was in the market for machinery. Crisis was gone by. Prosperity was come.
And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let himself be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the ice. "He rayther beats Bosting," says Captain Isaac Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright. "It's so cold there that they can skate all the year round; but he beats them, all the same."
"But," he continued, warming up, "when I think of the Indian powwow we had in this very spot six months ago, and what a mean bloat I was, going to the stub-tail dogs with my hat over my eyes, and what a hard lot we were all round, livin' on nothing but argee whiskey, and rampin' off on benders, instead of makin' good iron, and how the Works was flat broke, and how Dunderbunk was full of women crying over their husbands and mothers ashamed of their sons, boys, when I think how things was, and see how they are, and look at Mr.
The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically, since it was done in the sight of all Dunderbunk. He had divined a happy result, when he missed Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart. "I envy you, Bill," said he, "almost too much to put proper fervor into my congratulations."
As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would go the whole file. There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk Foundry.
It seemed a word of good omen, now. "The second thing," resumed the newcomer, "is a Man!" The Directors looked at each other and did not see such a being. "The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is a dunderhead," said Churm. "Pun!" cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a snooze. Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started a complimentary laugh. "Order, gentlemen!
There would be no work done to-day, except by a small gang keeping up the fires. The Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi-Annual Report an hour's polishing, before he joined all Dunderbunk on the ice. It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, "Peace on earth, good-will to men."
The Dunderbunk advertisement might now consider itself as permanent in the newspapers, and the Treasurer had very unnecessarily inserted the notice of a dividend, which everybody knew of already. When Mr. Churm was not by, they all claimed the honor of having discovered Wade, or at least of having been the first to appreciate him.
His face does not show an atom of change; and you know what Mr. Churm told us of his chivalric deeds elsewhere, and how he tamed and reformed Dunderbunk. He is crystal grit, as crystalline and gritty as he can be." "Grit seems to be your symbol of the highest qualities. It certainly is a better thing in man than in ice-cream.
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