“What’s that? Where’d the boxcar get converted—at a revival meetin’?”
“Aw, you’re just trying to be funny! A converted boxcar is one made over so that people can live in it. There’s a place for a stove, and bunks with curtains along each side. And next to it a flatcar is hooked on, and that’s your wood-yard—or if you burn coal, it’s your coal-yard. Just like a back yard at home, you know. And while the freight train is traveling you go over the tops of the cars and feed and water the mules and horses every day. It’s just like a farm on wheels. I’ve walked over the top of a freight train lots of times—when it was going pretty fast, too. And once when we moved from Ohio to a new job in Louisiana we had chickens on the flatcar, and a cow that gave milk in one of the boxcars. Pa milked her every day—morning and night. Don’t you think you’d like to travel that way?”
“I guess I would! Will yeh ask yer father about what I told you—Les an’ me goin’ along? We’ll work like the dickens—honest!”
“Uh-huh—sure I will. I don’t mind.”
“Then I’ll go get Les and tell ’im”—and Joshua stooped to remove his skates.
But a search of the spectators’ seats revealed no Lester humped up with his misery.
Joshua grew apprehensive. Had his brother taken this opportunity to sneak home and face punishment? In his heart he felt that this was what had happened. He hurried back to Madge.
“He—he’s gone,” he announced, in sepulchral tones. “And I—I guess I’ll have to be goin’, too. I gotta see what he’s done. I’m afraid he’s got scared out and gone home and spoiled it all. When’ll I see ye again, Ma-Madge?”
“Why, I’ll be here to-morrow, I guess.”
“About this time?”