And Jack didn’t.
How good the food smelt, and how good it tasted! Allan relished it more than he would have done any dinner of “Delmonicer’s,” for Mary was one of the best of cooks, and only the jaded palate relishes the sauces and fripperies of French chefs.
“A girl as can’t cook ain’t fit t’ marry,” Mary often said; a maxim which she had inherited from her mother, and would doubtless hand down to Mamie. “There’s nothin’ that’ll break up a home quicker ’n a bad cook, an’ nothin’ that’ll make a man happier ’n a good one.”
Certainly, if cooking were a test, this supper was proof enough of her fitness for the state of matrimony. There was a great platter of ham and eggs, fluffy biscuits, and the sweetest of yellow butter. And, since he did not drink coffee, Allan was given a big glass of fragrant milk to match Mamie’s. They were tasting one of the best sweets of toil—to sit down with appetite to a table well-laden.
After supper, they gathered on the front porch, and sat looking down over the busy, noisy yards. The switch-lamps gleamed in long rows, red and green and white, telling which tracks were open and which closed. The yard-engines ran fussily up and down, shifting the freight-cars back and forth, and arranging them in trains to be sent east or west. Over by the roundhouse, engines were being run in on the big turntable and from there into the stalls, where they would be furbished up and overhauled for the next trip. Others were being brought out, tanks filled with water, and tenders heaped high with coal, ready for the run to Parkersburg or Cincinnati. They seemed almost human in their impatience to be off—breathing deeply in loud pants, the steam now and then throwing up the safety-valve and “popping off” with a great noise.
The clamour, the hurry, the rush of work, never ceasing from dawn to dawn, gave the boy a dim understanding of the importance of this great corporation which he had just begun to serve. He was only a very little cog in the vast machine, to be sure, but the smoothness of its running depended upon the little cogs no less than on the big ones.
A man’s figure, indistinct in the twilight, stopped at the gate below and whistled.
“There’s Reddy Magraw,” said Jack, with a laugh. “I’d forgot—it was so hot t’-day, we thought we’d go over t’ th’ river an’ take a dip t’-night. Do you know how t’ swim, Allan?”
“Just a little,” answered Allan; “all I know about it was picked up in the swimming-pool at the gymnasium at Cincinnati.”
“Well, it’s time y’ learned more,” said Jack. “Every boy ought t’ know how t’ swim—mebbe some day not only his own life but the lives o’ some o’ his women-folks’ll depend on him. Come along, an’ we’ll give y’ a lesson.”