And they shook hands with a resounding smack that seemed to explode all Bojo's pent-up feelings. "All right, young fellow," said Granning with a grin. "To-morrow we'll find out what sort of stuff you're made of!" CHAPTER XXI BOJO IN OVERALLS The day he entered the employ of the Dyer-Garnett Caster and Foundry Company was like an open door into the wonderland of industry. The sun, red and wrapped in dull mists, came stolidly out of the east as they crossed the river in the unearthly grays, with electric lights showing in wan ferry-boats. When they entered the factory a few minutes before seven, the laborers were passing the time-clocks, punching their tickets, Polack and Saxon, Hun and American, Irish and Italian, the men a mixture of slouchy, unskilled laborers and keen, strong mechanics, home-owners and thinkers, the women of rather a higher class, bright-eyed, deft, with a prevailing instinct for coquetry. In the offices Dyer, lanky New Englander, engineer and inventor, and Garnett, the president, self-made, simple and shrewd, both in their shirt sleeves, gave him a cordial welcome. Unbeknown to Bojo, Granning had given a flattering picture of his future destination as heir apparent to the famous Crocker mills and his progressive desire for preliminary experience in factories that were handling problems of labor-saving along modern lines. "Glad to meet you," said Garnett, gripping his hand. "Mr. Granning tells me you want to see the whole scheme from the bottom up. It's not playing football, Mr. Crocker." "Hope not," said Bojo with a smile. "It's very good of you to give me an opportunity." "Don't know how you'll feel about it after a couple of weeks. I'll get Davy--that's my son--to show you around. We're doing some things here you'll be interested in. Mr. Dyer's just installed some very pretty machines. Davy'll put you onto the ropes--he's just been through it. That's a great plant of your father's--went through it last year. Nothing finer in the country." He found young Garnett a boy of twenty, just out of high-school, alert, eager, and stocked with practical knowledge. The morning he spent in exploration was a revelation. In his old prejudice against what he had confusedly termed business he had always recoiled as before a leveling process, stultifying to the imagination, a thing of mechanical movements and disciplined drudgery. He found instead his imagination leaping forward before the spectacle of each succeeding regiment of machines, before the teeming of progress, of the constant advance toward the harnessing of iron and steel things to the bidding of the human mind.