Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/999

Rh access to the roundhouse, Archie had just about lived there. Quiet and inoffensive, he at first had been a butt for the jokes of the wipers and the extras, but his good-natured patience disarmed those who harmlessly made fun of him, and those who maliciously persecuted him had one warning from his sledge-hammer fists, and left him alone afterwards.

On this especial morning Archie was stirred with an unusual animation. Ralph noticed this when he first came down to the roundhouse. The young inventor hung around the locomotive suspiciously. He even rode on the pilot of No. 999 to the depot, and for the past five minutes he had paced restlessly up and down the platform as though the locomotive held some peculiar fascination for him. As he now came up to the cab at Ralph's hail, his eye ran over the locomotive in the most interested way in the world, and Ralph wondered why.

"Call me, Fairbanks?" mumbled Archie, and Ralph could not catch his eye.

"I did, Graham," responded Ralph. "What's stirring you?"

"Why?"

"Chasing up 999."

"Am I?"