With which comforting reflection, he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, and took a little cat-nap until the junction was reached.
When he entered the little office, he found Nevins sitting listlessly at the table, his head in his hands. He glanced up quickly as Allan entered, with a kind of guilty start, and the boy noticed how pale and tired he looked. Nevins nodded, in answer to his greeting, then got unsteadily to his feet and stood drumming nervously with his fingers upon the table.
“You look regularly done up,” said Allan. “Had a hard day?”
“Hard!” echoed Nevins, hoarsely. “I should say so—hard’s no name for it! They’ve been tryin’ to send all the freight in the country through here. And everybody snortin’ mad, from the dispatchers down to the brakemen. You heard how that smarty lit into me the first thing this mornin’. It’s enough to make a man throw up the job!”
Allan saw how overwrought he was and dropped into the chair without replying, and began to look over the orders on the hook. Nevins watched him, his face positively haggard. Just then the sounder clicked off a rapid message, as the operator at Hamden reported the passage of a train to the dispatcher at headquarters.
“Hello,” said Allan; “there’s a special coming west. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s the president’s special,” answered Nevins, moistening his lips nervously. “A lot of the big guns are on it, on their way to attend a meeting at Cincinnati. They’ve kept the wires hot all day—nothing but thirty-nine, thirty-nine, thirty-nine. The other business had to take its chance.”
Thirty-nine, it may be explained in passing, is the signal used for messages of the general officers, and indicates that such messages have precedence over all other messages except train-orders.
Nevins paused a moment longer, gazing down at Allan’s bent head, and opened his mouth once or twice as though to speak; then, seizing his coat and hat, fairly rushed from the place.