Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/85

 and particular, and a freedom from the ills of haste and worry. A man with a paunch is a man apart and greatly to be envied, even when that paunch, as was the case with Regan, is of Irish extraction, for then the accompanying touch of Celtic temper makes him more like an ordinary, cross-grained, irritable, everyday mortal and less of a temperamental curiosity. Regan was justly proud of both—his paunch and his nationality. Regan put it the other way—his nationality and his paunch. That, however, is a matter for individual decision and the relative importance of things is as one sees it; the main thing is that one permitted him to use fiery words on occasion, and the other enabled him to preserve, ordinarily, a much to be commended state of equanimity.

Perversity of perversities! It was Spitzer that jolted Regan—not once, more than once. And before he got through, jolted him so hard that Regan hasn't got over the wonder of it yet.

"Think of it," he'll say, when the subject is brought up. "Think of it! You know Spitzer, h'm? Well, think of it! SPITZER!" And if it's summer he'll mop his beady brow, and if it's winter he'll twiddle his thumbs with his fingers laced over his embonpoint, which is to say over the lower button of his waistcoat.

Regan's first jolt came to him one morning as, after a critical inspection of his pets in the roundhouse—big six- and eight-wheeled mountain engines—he strolled out and leaned against the push-bar on the turntable, mentally debating the respective merits of a