Miss Walton was having a holiday. This left Oakley the sole tenant of the office.
He had returned from Chicago the day before, where he had gone to drum up work.
It was a hot, breathless morning in May. The machinery in the shops droned on and on, with the lazy, softened hum of revolving wheels, or the swish of swiftly passing belts. A freight was cutting out cars in the yards. It was rather noisy and bumped discordantly in and out of the sidings.
Beyond the tracks and a narrow field, where the young corn stood in fresh green rows, was a line of stately sycamores and vivid willows that bordered Billup's Fork. Tradition had it that an early settler by the name of Billup had been drowned there—a feat that must have required considerable ingenuity on his part, as the stream was nothing but a series of shallow riffles, with an occasional deep hole. Once Jeffy, generously drunk, had attempted to end his life in the fork. He had waded in above his shoe-tops, only to decide that the water was too cold, and had waded out again, to the keen disappointment of six small boys on the bank, who would have been grateful for any little excitement. He said he wanted to live to invent a drink that tasted as good coming up as it did going down; there was all kinds of money in such a drink. But the boys felt they had been swindled, and threw stones at him. It is sometimes difficult to satisfy an audience. Nearer at hand, but invisible, Clarence was practising an elusive dance-step in an empty coal-car. He was inspired by a lofty ambition to equal—he dared not hope to excel—a gentleman he had seen at a recent minstrel performance.
McClintock, passing, had inquired sarcastically if it was his busy day, but Clarence had ignored the question. He felt that he had nothing in common with one who possessed such a slavish respect for mere industry.
Presently McClintock wandered in from the hot out-of-doors to talk over certain repairs he wished undertaken in the shops. He was a typical American mechanic, and Oakley liked him, as he always liked the man who knew his business and earned his pay.
They discussed the repairs, and then Oakley asked, “How's my father getting along, Milt?”
“Oh, all right. He's a little slow, that's all.”
“What's he on now?”
“Those blue-line cars that came in last month.”