"Yes, dear Reggie," Father Barry answered. "When you are well you may come to church—may hear the beautiful music—see the little boys about the altar. But now you must mind the doctor. Don't you remember? just a little time ago you told him that you would be a good boy and do everything Father Barry wished. If you talk your throat will get bad again. You don't want it to hurt?"
Sympathy wrought on the boy's imaginative temperament; he enjoyed his own little part. "I felt so bad!" he wailed. He had naturally a broad accent, despite his Middle West locality. His voice, deep and full for so young a child, inclined to unflattened vowels.
"I felt so bad!" he repeated, in view of more attention.
"But now you will soon be well," his mother quieted. "Just think how good you should be when you are going to California!"
The promise in question acted like magic.
"Tell Reggie about the big ningen," he coaxed.
"If you close your eyes," Isabel agreed. The boy's lashes shut down. "Soon mother dear and Reggie are going far away on a long train," she began. "Every morning the engineer will give his big engine a hot breakfast,—a great deal of coal, and all the water it can drink. The long, long train will run ever so fast, away out across the plains, over the high mountains, to California. At first Jack Frost may try to catch the train, but the engineer must run the faster. Then soon Jack Frost will go howling back East."
"I want Fadder Barry to come too," the boy put in.
"If you talk, I shall not go on," his mother cautioned. "Reggie may eat his breakfast and dinner and supper on the train. At night he will sleep in a funny little bed. Maggie must watch that her boy doesn't roll on to the floor. After a long time the train will stop. Mother and Reggie and Maggie will get out, and——"
"Fadder Barry, too!" the boy persisted. He did not open his eyes, while tremulous lashes expressed his joy in the story.