“My chance to get a good thing will come again,” Ralph had told Mrs. Fairbanks. “And really, I am my own boss here. Even Barton Hopkins can’t tell me where to get off.”
For divisional supervisor Hopkins had soon become very much disliked. He was a good railroader—no doubt of that. But he should have been a drill-master in a military school rather than the head of a division of a railroad at a time when almost every railroad employee felt that he had been whipsawed between the Government and his employing railroad.
Hopkins lacked tact; he saw nothing but the job and what he could make of it. His god was discipline! He was upright and honest, but, as the saying goes, he bent over backwards when he stood erect. And Ralph Fairbanks was pretty thoroughly convinced that grave trouble was brewing because of Mr. Hopkins’ methods.
Just at this moment, however, it was Cherry Hopkins in whose affairs the young dispatcher was deeply interested. As she tried to wipe the stains from her skirt and “sniffled” back her tears, Ralph approached slowly.
“Now, Miss Cherry,” he begged, “don’t cry about it. If I could have caught that fellow I would have handed him over to one of the road’s policemen. It didn’t really hurt you——”
“I’m just as mad, Ralph Fairbanks, as I can be!” interrupted the girl, with heat. “And it is always the way wherever we go. The railroad men seem to hate us all.”
“Indeed?” rejoined Ralph thoughtfully. “Have you been troubled in Rockton before this?”
“Of course I have. And mother, too. We have been followed on the street, and booed and hissed. Father doesn’t mind——”
“I am quite sure he has not reported it to the chief detective of the road, Mr. Bob Adair.”
“Father would not report such a thing. He considers it beneath notice.”