"Well, I rather guess!" said Phineas, indignantly.
"You have to swing a red or a white lantern. I shall be glad when we have the semaphore signals on our road." (Sam's easy use of learned technical expressions always caused Mary Jane's mouth to open wide with admiration.) "I say, Phin, what color are Mary Jane's mittens?" Sam asked this question with sudden breathless eagerness. "A new operator, who was color-blind, wrecked the Northern Express on the L—— road!"
"Red," said Phineas, with scornful promptness, and was then forced to pass an examination in all the colors of Mary Jane's hooked rug.
"And if there's anything you don't understand, you can ask Lon Brophy in the ticket-office." Sam fell back on the lounge, with a long sigh, as he gave Phineas this parting assurance.
But Mary Jane ran out to the gate after him. "Don't sit down even on the three-legged stool. It might go over and you wouldn't wake. Think of the boy that stood on the burning deck, or the one that let the fox gnaw him, whenever you feel sleepy." Along with this stern advice Mary Jane forced upon Phineas a dainty lunch that she had prepared, and a can of coffee, which he could heat upon the station stove.
After all, Mary Jane was a good sister, and perhaps she did not deserve that Phineas should mutter, as he walked along, that it was a mistake for a girl to think herself so smart.
As Phin walked toward the station in the bracing air of the November night, he was hotly resentful of the distrust that had been shown of his ability to take Sam's place for just one night.
The station at Orinoco Junction was a lively place when Phineas relieved Tom Woolley, the day operator, at six o'clock. At that time many trains stopped, and they were crowded, because there was a great political gathering at L——, twenty miles farther on. The little restaurant was filled with a jostling crowd. The sharp cries of the popcorn boys mingled with political announcements and a running fire of boasts and jokes.
Tom Woolley took down his overcoat from its nail with a sigh of relief.
"They've kept me at it all day," he said.