freight schedule is always changing, because it’s a single track road and the dispatcher has to get the freights through when he can. Suppose you’re a brakeman, and your train is due out at two a.m. ; well, like as not, it will be changed to midnight, or to four in the morning. You go to bed as if you were going to sleep all night, with nothing on your mind. The call boy watches the schedule board, and half an hour before your train goes out, he comes and taps on your window and gets you up in time to make it. The call boy has to be on to things in the town. He must know when there’s a poker game on, and how to slip in easy. You can’t tell when there’s a spotter about, and if a man’s reported for gambling, he’s fired. Sometimes you have to get a man when he isn’t where he ought to be. I found there was usually a reason at home for that.” The boy spoke with gravity, as if he had reflected deeply upon irregular behaviour.
Just then Mrs. St. Peter came out into the garden and asked her husband if he wouldn’t bring his young friend in to lunch. Outland started and looked with panic toward the door by which he had come in; but the Professor wouldn’t hear of his going, and picked up his telescope to prevent his escape. As he carried it into the house and put it down in the hall, he noticed that it was strangely light for its bulk. Mrs. St. Peter introduced the guest to her two little girls, and asked him if he didn’t want to go upstairs to wash his hands. He disappeared; as he came back something disconcerting happened. The front hall and the front staircase were the only hard wood in the house, but as Tom came down the waxed steps, his heavy new shoes shot out from under him, and he sat down on the end of his spine with a thump. Little Kathleen burst into a giggle, and her elder sister looked at her reprovingly; Mrs. St. Peter apologized for the stairs.
“I’m not much used to stairs, living mostly in ’dobe houses,” Tom explained, as he picked himself up.