An engine and tender backed up and hooked on to the Dodge car; a fine-looking car, which must be the Lincoln car for the Government commissioners, had been coupled on, behind. While Terry gazed about, from his platform, trying to take in all the sights, here came General Dodge and Superintendent Reed, as if in a hurry.
“All aboard!” The general waved his arm at the engineer, as he sprang up the steps. To ring of bell and hiss of exhaust the little train started. There was no time lost.
“Hello, young man,” the general greeted, to Terry. “Ready for the day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I expect you’d like to begin with breakfast. So would Mr. Reed and I. We’ve made one beginning but we’ll make another. We all can eat and watch things go past at the same time.”
Decidedly, it was fun to sit at a table and eat while whirled along across country at a tremendous pace, with the landscape flitting by in plain sight just outside the windows.
“How fast are we going now, please?” Terry ventured.
The general looked at his watch a minute, and seemed to be listening.
“About twenty-five miles an hour, I should judge. Is that right, Sam?”
“Pretty nearly right,” agreed Superintendent Reed.