“Why isn’t it?”
Stumblingly and most awkwardly, as it seemed to him when he recalled it afterward, Larry blurted out some of his half-formed ambitions, and the conditions which were handcuffing them; the desire to get on in the world without knowing just how it was to be accomplished.
“If Dad hadn’t been crippled,” he finished; “if he could have gone on getting an engineer’s pay, things would be different. But as it is—well, I guess you can see how it is, Mr. Maxwell. I’m the oldest.”
The general manager heard him through without breaking in, and at the end of the story he was looking aside out of one of the darkened windows.
“You may not realize it,” he said, without looking around, “but you did a mighty brave thing to-night, boy. Dick has told me all about it; how it was your idea to take the roadmaster’s gasoline inspection car for the chase; how you kept on when he would have given up; how you drove him back at the last and wouldn’t let him share the risk which you took alone.”
Larry felt that this was too much. He had time for the sober second thought now, and he saw how all of the danger might have been avoided.
“I’m sort of ashamed of myself, Mr. Maxwell,” he said sheepishly. “The ’Thirty-one wasn’t going very fast; she was ‘simpled’ and was choking herself. If, instead of chasing her, we had run up to the despatcher’s office, they could have caught her all right at ‘yard limits’.”
“That doesn’t cut any figure,” was the sober reply. “The main thing is that you did what you set out to do—stopped that runaway engine. Results are what count. You didn’t think of the easy thing to do, but you did think of something that worked. For that the company is indebted to you. How should you like to have the debt paid?”
“We didn’t do it for pay,” Larry protested.
“I know that,”—curtly. “Just the same, you have earned the pay. What would you like? Don’t be bashful twice in the same evening.”