Page:The Country Boy.djvu/121

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THE COUNTRY BOY
113

out and tried to use it, when Clara Morris died just as the curtain went down, but we had caught colds from our feet wet from our own tears. Adda’s waist, which was green surah silk of the country pattern, looked like isinglass in a new stove. After we left the theatre we met a friend a few blocks away who asked what had happened to us and Adda broke down and began to sob. The friend thought at first that I had beaten her, till I told him we had been to see Clara Morris play “Camille.” We got home the next day, looking and feeling bad. The folks asked us how it was and we told them it was fine, but it wasn’t a comic opera.

The Narrow Gauge Railroad finally came to Silverton and then the town took a boom toward the depot. I got a job as engine wiper and owing to father’s prominence got promoted to fireman on the oldest engine on the road. The other engine was new and shiny and could run faster, and on that engine my father’s pioneer friend’s son was the engineer and his fireman was a halfbreed Indian. I worked hard for some months and dreamed nights of this halfbreed’s bringing me orders