“What’s that, Larry?” said the chief.
Larry repeated his question; adding: “I was just thinking——”
“All right; go on. We’re listening.”
“It’s—it’s just something Dick and I were talking about after Mr. Grissby went away. We were looking at that blocking engine as it came along, and the engineer leaned out of his cab window and asked us if we didn’t want to climb up and take a ride on a real railroad—just joshing us, I guess.”
“Well?”
“If you’d let us—or me ... it’s this way, you see. Part of the time he stops on the crossing, but mostly he lets the train drift on a little way past it before he reverses. If we could do something to make him run a little farther out of the way each time, and then something should happen to his engine so he couldn’t reverse——”
“We’re still listening,” said Chief Ackerman; and they were, all of them, by this time.
Naturally, this urging to go on made the inventor of schemes more embarrassed than ever. But he had gone too far now to back out.
“I was just thinking: if Dick and I should loaf around out here by the crossing, and that engineer should josh us again and ask us to ride——”