Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/108

Rh his hand and, apparently for the want of something better to do, was rubbing it here and there about the engine. He looked up as Lanny came to a stop alongside, met Lanny's smile and smiled back. Then he absent-mindedly mopped his face with the bunch of waste, without, however, appreciable effect, and leaned against the roller.

"Gettin' warm," he volunteered.

Lanny nodded, casting his eyes interestedly over the engine.

"I should think that would be a pretty warm job in hot weather," he observed conversationally.

"'Tis so. Put eighty or ninety pounds o' shtame in her an' she throws out the hate somethin' fierce."

"She's smaller than the other one, isn't she?"

"Yep. We use this one for the sidewalk work gin'rally. But she's good for tearin' up when she's the spikes in her."

"Spikes?" asked Lanny.

"Thim things." The man picked up a steel spike some eight inches long from the floor and showed Lanny how it was fixed in one of the numerous holes bored in the surface of the roller. After that Lanny's curiosity led to all sorts of questions. At the engineer's invitation he mounted the platform and, under instruction, moved the roller backwards and forwards and altered its course by the steering