Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/853

Rh Fogg. "Won't do for a regular thing, though."

"No?" insinuated Ralph attentively, glad to rouse his grouchy helper from his morose mood.

"Not a bit of it."

"Why not?"

"Used right along, they'd burn out any crown sheet. What's more, wait till you come to clean up—the whole furnace will be choked with cinders."

"I see," nodded Ralph, and just then they rounded near Macon for a fifteen minutes wait.

As Fogg went outside with oil can and waste roll, Mervin Clark came into the cab.

"Glad to get back where it's home like," he sang out in his chirp, brisk way. "Say, Engineer Fairbanks, that monument of brass buttons and gold cap braid is the limit. Discipline? why, he works on springs and you have to touch a button to make him act. I had to chum with the brakeman to find out what's up."

"Something is up, then?" inquired Ralph a trifle uneasily.

"Oh, quite. The conductor has been writing a ten-page report on the collision. It's funny, but the station man at Plympton"

"New man, isn't he?" inquired Ralph.

"Just transferred to Plympton yesterday morning," explained Clark. "Well, he swears that your