"You know you have no right in this part of the works. They wouldn't have me loafing in your department, and you must keep out of this!"
"I don't try to send anybody away from my department."
"You would if you had charge of it. In yours there is a foreman and fifty or sixty men; in this there is only the fireman, under the engineer, but the engineer is just as much a foreman as the boss of your department is there."
"You're a boy," sneered Croly, "and when the Tioga Iron Works has boys put in as bosses, they'll have to turn off the men and run the whole business with boys. That's all there is to it."
"Would you come here if my father was in charge?"
"It isn't likely I should."
"Then you admit that you have no right here?"
Croly was silent. It was plain enough to Larry what the matter was with the young man. The truth was he had at some time been temporarily in charge of a small portable or "donkey" engine, such as are used for hoisting purposes in stone quarries and in other out-of-door work, and he was incapable of recognizing the difference between the simple construction of such a machine and the complicated work in the great motive-power of the Tioga Iron Works.
Larry was a slow-spoken boy, and correspondingly slow in making a decision. But when his mind was really made up, he was equally slow to change it.
He looked at the clock, and then at his own watch. In one minute the next whistle would blow, and then the engine must be started.