After a minute he says: “I used to live in a little town like this when I was a boy, and I remember there wasn’t very much to do. I used to hang around the carpenter shop watching the carpenters work, and around the machine shop seeing how the machinists did things. It was pretty interesting. I suppose you do the same here.”
“We-ell, it ain’t exactly a machine shop we hang around.”
“Oh,” he says, “what is it?”
“It’s a—a—”
Just then Mark seemed to wake up sudden He grunted and interrupted what I was going to say, and then did the saying himself. “It’s a b-barn,” he says.
“Oh,” says the man, “a barn? What do you watch in the barn? The horses?”
“No. Ain’t no h-h-horses.” Then he half shut his eyes like he was going to take another nap.
The man didn’t say anything for a spell. “I was always interested in machines when I was a boy,” he says, at last. “Any kind of a machine or engine got me all excited. But we didn’t have as fine machines then as you do now. They’re making improvements and inventing new things every day. Some day they’re going to invent something to make locomotives better—something along the turbine line, I expect. Know what a turbine is?”
I was just going to say yes, when Mark woke up again. “Yes,” he says, “a t-t-turbine is a climbin’ vine that grows over p-porches.”
The man kind of strangled and looked away. “No,” he says in a minute, “I guess you got it mixed up with woodbine.”