CHAPTER VII. WADE DOWN! 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." "Your time will come," the foreman rejoined. And says Belle, "I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow her." "I don't see her," Wade replied, looking with a mock-grave face up and down and athwart the river. "When you've all gone to dinner, I'll prospect ten miles up and down and try to find a good matrimonial claim that's not taken." "You will not come up to dinner?" Belle asked. "I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday," said Wade. "I've sent Perry up for a luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede my quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow." "Oh!" cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately. "Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe. Ah, yes! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor." Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with military honors. So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this, and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits, from noon to dusk on Christmas-Day, up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of roast-turkey floating over the city,--and much good, it is said, it does him. Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its several noses--snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines, bulgies, and bifids--on the way to the several households which those noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families. Wade had not had half skating enough. "I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my luncheon there among the hemlocks." The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes the rumor of his return. Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say. I do not wish to make other fellows unhappy.