"Same with me," said the stoker happily. "Why, wot's wrong?" he added, for a tragic cry had broken from the engineer.
"Mate," he stammered tremulously, "where did you keep your policy?"
"Meanin' the bit o' blue-printed paper I 'ad from the Popular Thrifty? Wot do you want to know for?" snapped the stoker suspiciously.
"It just come into my 'ead to arsk," said the engineer, in faltering accents.
"In my little locker in the van, since you're so curious," said the stoker grudgingly.
"I 'ad mine stitched up in the piller o' my bunk with my Post Office Savin's book," said the engineer in the deep, hollow voice of a funeral bell. "An' it's burned to hashes, an' so is yours!"
"Then it's nineteen to one the company won't pay up," said the stoker after an appalled silence.
"Ten 'underd to one," groaned the engineer.
Another blank silence was broken by the stoker's saying, with a savage oath:
"I wish that boy was alive, I do."