“What sort of a job, son? A man with one leg!”
“He doesn’t need legs to chop tickets with.”
The governess listened. She did not like Americans. Barbarians they were, and these were of the middle class, being in trade. For a scenic railway is trade, naturally. Except that they paid a fat salary, with an extra month at Christmas, she would not be there. She and Pepy, the maid, had many disputes about this. But Pepy was a Dalmatian, and did not matter.
“He means the old soldier upstairs,” said Bobby’s mother softly. She was a gentle person. Her eyes were wide and childlike, and it was a sort of religion of the family to keep them full of happiness.
This also the governess could not understand.
“So the old soldier is out of work,” mused the head of the family. Head, thought the governess! When they wound him about their fingers! She liked men of sterner stuff. In her mountain country the men did as they wished, and sometimes beat their wives by way of showing their authority. Under no circumstances, she felt, would this young man ever beat his wife. He was a weakling.
The weakling smiled across the table at the wife with the soft eyes. “How about it, mother?” he asked. “Shall the firm of ‘Bobby and I’ offer him a job?”
“I would like it very much,” said the weakling’s wife, dropping her eyes to hide the pride in them.
“Suppose,” said the weakling, “that you run up after dinner, Bob, and bring him down. Now sit still, young man, and finish. There’s no such hurry as that.”
And in this fashion did old Adelbert become ticket-chopper of the American Scenic Railway.