Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial402dodg).pdf/673

1913.] hands at either side of their eyes as they peered through the darkness, smiled to discoyer those two eager little watchers who counted the stop- ping of the Pullman at this junction as the great- est event of the day.

Will’m and Libby knew nearly every engineer and conductor on the road by sight, and had their own names for them, The engineer on this morning train they called Mr. Smiley, because he always had a cheerful grin for them, and sometimes a wave of his big, grimy hand. This time Mr. Smiley was too busy and too provoked by the delay to pay any attention to the small boy perched on the fence-post. Some of the passengers, finding that they might have to wail half an hour or more, began to climb out and walk up and down the road past him. Several of them, attracted by the wares in the window of the little notion shop which had once been a parlor, sauntered in and came out again, eating some of Grandma Neal’s doughnuts.

Presently Will’m noticed that everybody who passed a certain sleeping-coach stooped down and looked under it, He felt impelled to look under it himself and discover why. So he climbed down from the post and trudged along the road, kicking the rocks out of his way with stubby little shoes already scuffed from much previous kicking. At the same moment, the steward of the dining-car stepped down from the vestibuled platform and strolled slowly toward him, with his hands in his trousers’ pockets.

“Hullo, son!” he remarked good-humoredly in passing, giving an amused glance at the solemn child stuffed into a gray sweater and blue mittens, with a toboggan cap pulled down over his soft bobbed hair. Usually Will’m responded to such greetings, So many people came into the shop that he was not often abashed by strangers. But this time he was so busy looking at something that dangled from the steward’s vest pocket that he failed to say hullo back at him. It was what seemed to be the smallest gold watch he had ever seen, and it impressed him as very queer that the man should wear it on the outside of his pocket instead of the inside. He stopped still in the road and stared at it until the man passed him, then he turned and followed him slowly at a distance.

A few rods farther ou, the steward stooped and looked under the coach, and spoke to a man who was out of sight, but who was hammering on the other side. A voice called back something about a hot-box and cutting out that coach, and, reminded of his original purpose, Will’m followed on and looked, likewise. Although he squatted down and looked for a long time, he could n’t see a single box, only the legs of the man who was hammering on the other side. But just as he straightened up again, he caught the gleam of something round and shiningly golden, no bigger than a quarter, lying almost between his feet. It was a tiny baby watch like the one that swung from the steward’s vest pocket. Vor, XL.—134.