"I see you all recognize the portrait. It is Peter Strong as you have met and known him. Yet we can never tell what the future will unfold. If it chanced that time should bring to this lad a career fraught with greater responsibilities than he now holds I want you to remember that he came into the works a boy, like many of you; that he was one with you in play as well as in work; that he toiled at the hardest tasks, never shunning what was difficult or disagreeable; that he was, is, and I hope will always be, your comrade--the product of the Coddington tanneries." With a bow and a smile to the silent crowd before him the president withdrew. Then as the workmen turned to disperse a few clear words from some one in the throng behind caught Peter's ear: "It's more than likely the president means to push Strong along to the top of the ladder. He is mightily interested in the boy; anybody can see that. Mayhap the lad will make up to him for his own son who, I've heard say, is a lazy little snob and a great disappointment to his father." [Illustration] CHAPTER X THE CLIMB BECOMES DIFFICULT It would not have been strange if with all this adulation Peter had come to think himself a very clever boy--perhaps the cleverest one in the world. Fortunately for his modesty, however, his daily life did not tend to foster any such delusion. He received occasional commendation, it is true, from his superiors, but to counterbalance it he continued to have many a rebuke thrown at him during the year he and Nat toiled together tanning hides. The newness of the work combined with a score of well-meant blunders placed Peter Strong on entirely equal footing with other workmen, and quite as liable to correction. Even had these conditions been otherwise the memory of the lazy little snob who was a great disappointment to his father would have served to crush in the lad any undue sense of his own importance. Considering the popular rating of Peter Coddington it certainly was just as well that he had entered the works under some other name than his own. But although the bitterness of this criticism rankled, its sting was removed by the thought that lazy and snobbish as Peter Coddington had been, thanks to Peter Strong he was neither lazy nor snobbish now; nor was he, the boy acknowledged, the disappointment to his father that he might have been had not prompt and heroic measures been taken. Yet even Peter Strong was obliged to admit after truthful scrutiny of his progress that there still was room for improvement. Accordingly he accepted submissively the censure that fell to his lot and, as Carmachel said, "did not consider himself the whole tannery just because one room in it was named after him."