Mrs. Briggs looked up inquiringly.
"Stokes is a clever fellow," pursued Top Senior regretfully, slicing vigorously into the cold corned beef, for he was hungry. "Smart as a steel trap, and onderstan's his business. I never see a fireman what hed a better chance o' risin' to an ingineer. He knows Her pretty nigh's well ez I do. I've took real comfort in learning him all I could. But I'm afeerd, sometimes, he's on a down-grade and the brakes don't work."
"You mean that he drinks, don't you, father?" asked the sharp-eyed boy at his elbow.
"There, father!" interjected the mother. "You might 'a' known he'd onderstan', no matter how you put it!"
"I ain't afeered o' my boy blabbin'!" The brawny hand stroked the thin light hair of his only child. "An' I want he should learn to hate the stuff. It's the devil's best drivin' wheel—liquor is. I'd ruther lay you with my own han's 'cross the rails this very night, an' drive Her right over you, than to know that you'd grow up a drunkard. Never do you forget them words, Junior! I mean every one o' them!"
The boy started at the earnestness of the exhortation, winked hard to keep his eyes dry, and changed the subject. "Hev you noticed my lily to-day, mother? I guess it'll be wide open by the time you get in to-night, father."
They all turned to look at the tall stem, crowned by the unfolding calyx. "Junior's goin' to be a master-hand with flowers," observed the mother. "He saves me pretty nigh all the trouble o' takin' keer of 'em. I've been thinkin' that might be a good business for him when he grows up."
She was always forecasting his future with more anxiety than generally enters into maternal hopes and fears. When but a year old, he had fallen from the arms of a neighbor who had caught him up from the floor in a fit of tipsy fondness. The child's back and hip were severely injured. He had not walked a step until he was five years of age, and would be lame always. He was now twelve—a dwarf in statue, hump-backed, weazen-faced and shrill-voiced, unsightly in all eyes but those of his parents. To them he was a miracle of precocity and beauty. His mother took in fine ironing to pay for his private tuition from a public school-teacher who lived in the neighborhood. He learned fast and eagerly. His father, at the teacher's suggestion, subscribed to a circulating library and the same kind friend selected books for the cripple's reading. There was a hundred dollars in the savings bank, against the name of "Topliffe Briggs, Junior," deposited, dollar by dollar, and representing countless acts of self-denial on the part of the industrious couple, and his possible profession was a favorite theme of family converse.
"For that matter, there's lot o' things a scholard like him ken do," rejoined Top, Senior, with affectionate confidence in his heir's talents and acquirements. "'Tain't like 'twould be with a feller like me whose arms an' legs is his hull stock in trade. Why, I min' seein' a leetle rat of a man come on board one time 'scorted by a dozen 'o the biggest bugs in the city, an' people a-stretchin' their necks out o' j'int to ketch a look of him. Sech a mealy-faced, weak-lookin' atomy he was! But millions o' people was a-readin' that very day a big speech he'd made in Washin'ton, an' he'd saved the country from trouble more 'n once. He mought 'a' been President ef he had chose to run. That's the good o' hevin' a tiptop head-piece."
"I've made up my mind!" said Top, Junior, with an air. "I'm goin' to be a Hero! Like Julius Cæsar an' Alexander an' William Tell an' Captain John Smith, an' other men I've read about. I wish you would be a Hero, father! It's ever so much nicer than runnin' an engine. Won't you—please! You are strong enough and good enough for anything, an' you know a great deal about things!"