And there they sat around the green table, no longer forlorn and dreading a, failure, but all chuckling with satisfaction over their prosperity. They were a happy and hilarious family now,--so hilarious that the President was obliged to be always rapping to Order with his paper-knife. Every one of these gentlemen was proud of himself as a Director of so successful a Company. 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. They all invited him to dinner,--the others at their houses, Sam Gwelp at his club. They had not yet begun to wax fat and kick. They still remembered the panic of last summer. They passed a unanimous vote of the most complimentary confidence in Wade, approved of his system, forced upon him an increase of salary, and began to talk of "launching out" and doubling their capital. In short, they behaved as Directors do when all is serene. Churm and Wade had a hearty laugh over the absurdities of the Board and all their vague propositions. "Dunderbunk," said Churm, "was a company started on a sentimental basis, as many others are." "Mr. Brummage fell in love with pig-iron?" "Precisely. He had been a dry-goods jobber, risen from a retailer somewhere in the country. He felt a certain lack of dignity in his work. He wanted to deal in something more masculine than lace and ribbons. He read a sentimental article on Iron in the 'Journal of Commerce': how Iron held the world together; how it was nerve and sinew; how it was ductile and malleable and other things that sounded big; how without Iron civilization would stop, and New Zealanders hunt rats among the ruins of London; how anybody who would make two tons of Iron grow where one grew before was a benefactor to the human race greater than Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon; and so on,--you know the eloquent style. Brummage's soul was fired. He determined to be greater than the three heroes named. He was oozing with unoccupied capital. He went about among the other rich jobbers, with the newspaper article in his hand, and fired their souls. They determined to be great Iron-Kings,--magnificent thought! They wanted to read in the newspapers, 'If all the iron rails made at the Dunderbunk Works in the last six months were put together in a straight line, they would reach twice round our terraqueous globe and seventy-three miles two rails over.' So on that poetic foundation they started the concern." Wade laughed. "But how did you happen to be with them?" "Oh! my friend Damer sold them the land for the shop and took stock in payment. I came into the Board as his executor. Did I never tell you so before?" "No."