The night telegraph operator at Orinoco Junction had the mumps. His name was Samuel Dusenberry, and he was seventeen, which is young to have so responsible a position; in fact it was Sam's first position, and he was on trial. He was also the head of his family, and in that position Sam had been heard to grumblingly remark that he was also on trial, for Phineas and Mary Jane, and even little Ajax, thought they could manage things as well as he could.
Although seventeen is young for such responsibilities as Sam's, it is disgracefully old to have the mumps—or so Sam thought, and he persisted in declaring that he hadn't, while his cheeks swelled and swelled, until his watery smarting eyes were almost concealed; and he was extremely cross when little Ajax assured him that if he felt just as if he were not Sam at all, that was the mumps, because that was the way he felt when he had 'em. Mary Jane, who attended to the family grammar, was somewhat troubled because they all spoke of the disease as plural; but Phineas stoutly maintained that this was proper when you had 'em on both sides at once, like Sam.
He hadn't the mumps, and if he had, he was going to his work at the station that night; that was what Sam insisted, although Mary Jane begged him not to with tears in her eyes, and threatened to tell their mother, from whom they carefully kept every worrying thing, because she was a helpless invalid. It was only at the last moment, when he found that things began to whirl around him and his knees to shake, when he tried to get to the door, that Sam gave up, and said he supposed Phineas would have to go in his place.
"It is so fortunate," said Mary Jane, "that Phineas knows how."
"But he's such a sleepy-head. I ought to have asked the company to appoint a substitute. It's irregular, anyway, and if anything should happen—!" groaned Sam.
He was one who felt his responsibilities, and mumps are not conducive to cheerful views. As for Phineas, he felt that at last the boy and the opportunity had met. Phineas had been repressed—kept in the background all too long, in his own opinion, first by the supposed superior "smartness" of Sam, and second by the continual tutelage of his twin sister Mary Jane. Her whole attention seemed to be given to the subject of what a boy ought not to do; after a time this becomes wearing upon the boy. Perhaps Mary Jane had come to assume this unpleasant superiority because a heavy twin-sisterly duty constantly devolved upon her—keeping Phineas awake; in the history class, in the long prayer, when Uncle Samuel came, periodically, to give them good advice, Mary Jane found it always necessary to keep her eye on Phineas and the sharpest elbow in Orinoco in readiness.
At first Mary Jane had said that he ought not to learn telegraphy, because he could not keep awake; but when he persisted, she came to share his optimistic belief that it would keep him awake. But perhaps Sam's groan was not without its excuse; certainly no one disputed that Phineas was "a sleepy-head."
"I tell you it's hard for even an old stager to keep awake all night long"—Sam had been an operator for two months—"even when he's had some sleep in the daytime, as you haven't. It won't do for you to sit down at all, you know; or if you get all tired out walking round, sit on the tall three-legged stool out in the middle of the floor; if you get to nodding, that will tip over. I've fallen asleep once or twice, but it has waked me when my office has been called on the wire. It wouldn't wake you!"
"It won't have a chance, because I sha'n't be asleep," said Phineas, stoutly.
"Your eyesight is good, isn't it, Phin?"