But at the door he turned, as if struck by a sudden misgiving, and looked Phin over critically.
"It's going to quiet down by-and-by. Can you keep awake all night—a youngster like you?"
It seemed as if Mary Jane must have been telling; she always did talk and talk—a worse fault than being a little sleepy, if she had only known it, thought Phin. Tom Woolley was nineteen, and had an incipient mustache; he twirled its imaginary ends as he looked Phin over; and Phin's blood boiled.
"Oh, well, sonny, don't fire up," said Tom, easily; "but you'd better look sharp, you know," he added, with a grave nod. "There are a couple of extra trains expected, and the president of the road is likely to be on board of one of them; lives up at Ganges, you know—going home to vote."
Phin muttered that he guessed he could take care of extra trains, whether there were presidents on board or not, and when Tom Woolley had taken himself off, his courage rose, and he felt himself master of the situation.
By seven o'clock there came a lull; when the nine-o'clock bell rang from the Baptist church steeple you would have thought all Orinoco had gone to sleep. There were no trains between half past eight and ten. Nine o'clock was Phin's bedtime; it's queer, but almost anywhere, unless it's the night before the Fourth of July, a boy feels his bedtime; besides, the room was close, and the clock ticked monotonously. Phin heated his coffee and ate his luncheon; he wasn't hungry, but it was necessary to do something to shake off drowsiness. There was chicken, and Nep crunched the bones and barked for a cooky; after that he scratched the door and whined so that Phin was forced to let him out; he thought the dog only wanted to stretch his legs and breathe a little fresh air, but Nep walked deliberately homeward, and refused to be whistled back. Nep disliked irregular proceedings, and knew the comfort of one's own bed at night.
"Of course I don't really need him to keep me awake," Phin said to himself; but nevertheless his heart sank; he began to have a suspicion that nights were long.
He pulled himself together and began to walk the floor; when he grew so tired that he ached he drew the three-legged stool out into the middle of the floor and perched himself upon it.
Suddenly—it seemed only a moment after he had brought out that stool—he found himself in the office with his hand on the key; there had been a call on his office; he had been asleep, and had been wakened by it, as Sam boasted that he had been! A fellow might allow himself to drowse a little when he could wake like that.
No, the Punjaub express had not passed; that was what they wanted to know at Cowaree and all along the line. Presently uncomplimentary epithets began to be hurled at him over the wire. Sam had complained that the fellow at Cowaree had "the big head," but—the Punjaub express had passed, so they said!