Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/620

52 Ralph shook hands with the speaker, a boy hobbling about the place on a crutch.

"What's it going to be?" asked Limpy Joe, "full dinner or a lunch?"

"Both, best you've got," smiled Ralph. "The railroad is paying for this."

"That so? Then we'll reduce the rates. Railroad has been too good to me to overcharge the company."

"This is my friend, Zeph Dallas," introduced Ralph.

"Glad to know you," said Joe. "Sit down at the counter, fellows, and I'll soon have you served."

"Well, well," said Zeph, staring around the place one way, then the other, and then repeating the performance. "This strikes me."

"Interesting to you, is it?" asked Ralph.

"It's wonderful. Fixed this up all alone out of odds and ends? I tell you, I'd like to be a partner in a business like this."

"Want a partner here, Joe?" called out Ralph to his friend in a jocular way.

"I want a helper," answered the cripple, busy among the shining cooking ware on a kitchen stove at one end of the restaurant.

"Mean that?" asked Zeph.

"I do. I have some new plans I want to carry