Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/902

78 His mother only smiled sweetly and proudly upon him. Then she asked:

"Was it a hard trip, Ralph?"

"In a way," responded Ralph. "But what made it harder was some unpleasant developments entirely outside of railroad routine."

"That so? It never rains but it pours!" proclaimed an intruder abruptly, and, awakened from his sleep by the sound of voices, Zeph Dallas came into the dining room yawning and stretching himself.

"Why!" exclaimed Ralph, giving the intruder a quick stare, "what have you ever been doing to yourself?"

"Me?" grinned Zeph—"you mean that black eye and that battered cheek?"

"Yes—accident?"

"No—incident," corrected Zeph, with a chuckle. "A lively one, too, I can tell you."

"Fell off the engine?"

"No, fell against a couple of good hard human fists. We had been sorting stray freights all the afternoon on old dinky 97, and had sided to let a passenger go by, when I noticed a man with a bag and a stick picking up coal along the tracks. Just then, a poor, ragged little fellow with a basket came around the end of the freight doing the same. The man thought he had a monopoly in