“You were frightened—frightened. You showed a white feather!”
Half asleep as he was, Billy, tired of William Wallace’s superior airs, roused himself long enough to say: “We’ll see who has white feathers.”
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT IRON KEY
July was hot. Everybody said so. The sun burned the grass in the yards till it was brown, and no rain came to make it green again. All the men were tired; some of them were cross.
Mr. Prescott put in more electric fans. Then he played the hose to keep the air cool, but the water supply was so low that he was ordered to stop using the hose.
One day he had an awning put up near the gate, and sent lame Tom Murphy, the timekeeper, out there to sit.
Tom, preferring the cool of the great door where he had always sat, confided his trouble to Billy.
“It’s my opinion,” he said, “privately spoken to you alone, that the super sent me out here for something besides air. It’s been my opinion, for some time, that there’s trouble somewhere.”