"Mr. Beezer," said Mrs. Beezer, with some asperity, "you put down that paper and look at me."

Mr. Beezer obeyed a little doubtfully.

"Now," continued Mrs. Beezer, "what's got into you since you went into the roundhouse, I don't know; but I've sorter had suspicions, and this book looks like 'em. You might just as well make a clean breast of what's on your mind, because I'm going to know."

Beezer looked at his wife and scowled. He felt what might be imagined to be somewhat the feelings of a man who is caught sneaking in by the side entrance after signing the pledge at a Blue Ribbon rally. It was not a situation conducive to good humor.

"There ain't anything got into me," said he truculently. "If you want to know what I'm doing with that book, I'm reading it because I'm interested in it. And I've come to the conclusion that a fitter's job alongside of an engineer's ain't any better than a mud-picking Polack's."

"You should have found that out before you went into the shops ten years ago," said Mrs. Beezer, with a sweetness that tasted like vinegar.

"Ten years ago!" Beezer flared. "How's a fellow to know what he's cut out for, and what he can do best, when he starts in? How's he to know, Mrs. Beezer, will you tell me that?"

Mrs. Beezer was not sympathetic.

"I don't know how he's to know," she said, "but I know that the trouble with some men is that they don't know when they're well off, and if you're thinking of----"

"I ain't," said Beezer sharply.

"I said 'if,' Mr. Beezer; and if----"

"There's no 'if' about it," Beezer lied fiercely. "I'm not----"

"You are," declared Mrs. Beezer emphatically, but with some wreckage of English due to exceeding her speed permit--Mrs. Beezer talked fast.

"When you act like that I know you are, and I know you better than you do yourself, and I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, and come home here dead some night and wake me up same as poor Mrs. Dalheen got her man back week before last on a box car door. Don't you know when you're well off? You an engineer! What kind of an engineer do you think you'd make? Why----"

"Mrs. Beezer," said Beezer hoa.r.s.ely, "shut up!"

Mrs. Beezer caught her breath.

"What did you say?" she gasped.

"I said," said Beezer sullenly, picking up his paper again, "that I'd never have thought of it, if you hadn't put it into my head; and now the more I think of it, the better it looks."

"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Beezer profoundly. "And now, Mr. Beezer, let this be the last of it. The idea! I never heard of such a thing!"

Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally enough, Mrs. Beezer's cold-water att.i.tude had precisely the opposite effect on Jimmy Beezer to that which she had intended it should have. It was the side-entrance proposition over again. When you've been caught sneaking in that way, you might just as well use the front door on Main Street next time, and have done with it. Beezer began to do a little talking around the roundhouse. The engine crews, by the time they tumbled to the fact that it wasn't just the ordinary grumble that any man is ent.i.tled to in his day's work, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, winked surrept.i.tiously at each other--and encouraged him.

Now it is not to be implied that Jimmy Beezer was anybody's fool--not for a minute--a first-cla.s.s master fitter with his time served is a long way from being in that cla.s.s right on the face of it. Beezer might have been a little blinded to the tongues and winks on account of his own earnestness; perhaps he was--for a time. Afterwards--but just a minute, or we'll be running by a meeting point, which is mighty bad railroading.

Beezer's cap, when he took the plunge and tackled Regan, had got tilted pretty far back, so far that the peak stood off his forehead at about the same rakish angle that his upturned little round k.n.o.b of a nose stuck up out of his beard; which is to say that Beezer had got to the stage where he had decided that the professional swing through the gangway he had been practising every time, and some others, that he had occasion to get into a cab, was going to be of some practical use at an early date.

He put it up to Regan one morning when the master mechanic came into the roundhouse.

Regan leaned his fat little body up against the jamb of one of the big engine doors, pulled at his scraggly brown mustache, and blinked as he listened.

"What's the matter with you, Beezer, h'm?" he inquired perplexedly, when the other was at an end.

"Haven't I just told you?" said Beezer. "I want to quit fitting and get running."

"Talks as though he meant it," commented Regan sotto voce to himself, as he peered earnestly into the fitter's face.

"Of course, I mean it," declared Beezer, a little tartly. "Why wouldn't I?"

"No," said Regan; "that ain't the question. The question is, why would you? H'm?"

"Because," Beezer answered promptly, "I like a snap as well as the next man. It's a better job than the one I've got, better money, better hours, easier all around, and one I can hold down with the best of them."

Regan's eyebrows went up.

"Think so?" he remarked casually.

"I do," declared Beezer.

"Well, then," said Regan, "if you've thought it all out and made up your mind, there's nothing I know of to stop you. Want to begin right away?"

"I do," said Beezer again. It was coming easier than he had expected--there was a jubilant trill in his voice.

"All right," said Regan. "I'll speak to Clarihue about it. You can start in wiping in the morning."

"Wiping?" echoed Beezer faintly.

"Sure," said Regan. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Wiping--a dollar-ten a day."

"Look here," said Beezer with a gulp; "I ain't joking about this."

"Well, then, what are you kicking about?" demanded Regan.

"About wiping and a dollar-ten," said Beezer. "What would I do with a dollar-ten, me with a wife and three kids?"

"I don't know what you'd do with it," returned Regan. "What do you expect?"

"I don't expect to start in wiping," said Beezer, beginning to get a little hot.

"You've been here long enough to know the way up," said Regan.

"Wiping, firing--you take your turn. And your turn'll come for an engine according to the way things are shaping up now in, say, about fifteen years."

"Fifteen years!"

"Mabbe," grinned Regan. "I can't promise to kill off anybody to accommodate you, can I?"

"And don't the ten years I've put in here count for anything?" queried Beezer aggressively. "Why don't you start me in sweeping up the round-house? Wiping! Wiping, my eye! What for? I know all about the way up. That's all right for a man starting in green; but I ain't green. Why, there ain't a year-old apprentice over in the shops there that don't know more about an engine than any blooming engineer on the division. You know that, Regan--you know it hanged well, don't you?"

"Well," admitted the master mechanic, "you're not far wrong at that, Beezer."

"You bet, I'm not!" Beezer was emphatic. "How about me, then? Do I know an engine, every last nut and bolt in her, or don't I?"

"You do," said Regan. "And if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, I wouldn't ask for a better fitter any time than yourself."