Chapter 63 - Page 2

every stage, and in a vast variety of shapes; — in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched into eccentric and perverse forms, as separate parts of machinery; mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about, under the blows of the steam hammer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds.

“This is a place to make a man’s head ache, too!” says the trooper, looking about him for a counting-house. “Who comes here? This is very like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir.”

“Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?”

“Excuse me. Young Mr Rouncewell, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“I was looking for your father, sir. I wished to have a word with him.”

The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time, for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to be found. “Very like me before I was set up — devilish like me!” thinks the trooper, as he follows. They come to a building in the yard; with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the office, Mr George turns very red.

“What name shall I say to my father?” asks the young man.

George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers “Steel,” and is so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office, who sits at a table with account-books before him, and some sheets of paper, blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes. It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron, purposely broken to be tested, at various periods of their service, in various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke is seen, through the windows, rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys, to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys.

“I am at your service, Mr Steel,” says the gentleman, when his visitor has taken a rusty chair.

“Well, Mr Rouncewell,” George replies, leaning forward, with his left arm on his knee, and his hat in his hand; and very chary of meeting his brother’s eye; “I am not without my expectations, that in the present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served as a Dragoon in my day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I don’t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?”