.007
echoing round-house, you would have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents.
A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that came down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game, speaking to a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.
"Where did this thing blow in from?" he asked, with a dreamy puff of light steam.
"It 's all I can do to keep track of our makes," was the answer, "without lookin' after your back-numbers. Guess it 's something Peter Cooper left over when he died."
.007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even a hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper experimented upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and water in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.
Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step in front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.
"Something 's wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher tells us anything about our stock, I think. That kid 's all right. Eustis designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain't that good enough?"
.007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.
"We don't use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania," said
[244]
