vehicle. Indeed, it was not regarded as a marvel, but as a joke—a huge, preposterous farce.
As George gazed there was only one man near the vehicle, a person in all-enveloping overalls and a greasy mechanic's cap, who squatted, prying into the intricacies of the machinery, tapping, peering, and occasionally squirting oil. But presently he touched something that seemed to make the machinery blow up in noise, to the accompaniment of clouds of smoke and fumes of most vile odor. It would have taken a steadier nerve than George's to stand his ground against this sudden manifestation of a hurricane in the midriff of an old spring wagon. Instinctively the lad leaped backward toward the door, but when he saw the workmen not even glancing up from forge and lathe, he turned again to look with startled eyes. The wagon was still there, but vibrating with some whirling mechanical force, and the man in overalls still knelt beside it solicitously.
When Charles B. King straightened his back, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste and wearing an air of having concluded operations upon his patient for that day, he noticed the boy for the first time—a lad in his first long pants probably, with a reefer jacket, belt unbuttoned, and a cap perched abstractedly on the back of his head. His hands were thrust deep
