Just then little Alf piped up in that funny way he has and said, “My mother doesn’t believe in adventures.”
“Well,” I said “she’ll never pull much of a stroke with Scout Harris then.”
“They always end by somebody getting dead,” he said.
“Just the same,” Pee-wee shouted, “I bet that old car is fifty years old. I bet if it could talk it would have a tale to tell——”
“A which?” I said.
“How do we know where it has been?” he kept up. “Why can’t a railroad car have a-what-do-you-call it—a romantic past, just the same as a ship or an old house where—maybe where George Washington used to stay? How do we know?”
“Maybe it’s the very car that George Washington crossed the Delaware in,” I said, just to jolly him along.
“How about an old Indian stage coach?” he piped up.
“Kid,” I said; “old sailing ships and wrecks and Indian stage coaches are one thing, and wheelbarrows and bicycles and lawn mowers and sewing machines and railroad cars are another thing. You see pictures of shipwrecks, but you never see pictures of old railroad cars. You should worry. Come on inside and let’s measure for the lockers and then let’s go home; I’m tired out.”
Inside that car there was a funny kind of a smell like there always is in railroad cars. It was kind of like dust and kind of like plush and kind of like smoke. The floor was awful smooth and shiny, just from so many people walking on it for years and years and years. All the woodwork was walnut and that was a sign of the car being old. A lot of the seats were broken and there was one place where two close together were broken. So we had decided to take them away and build our lockers there.