The night telegraph operator at Orinoco Junction had the mumps. His name was Samuel Dusenberry, and he was seventeen, which is young to have so responsible a position; in fact it was Sam's first position, and he was on trial. He was also the head of his family, and in that position Sam had been heard to grumblingly remark that he was also on trial, for Phineas and Mary Jane, and even little Ajax, thought they could manage things as well as he could. Although seventeen is young for such responsibilities as Sam's, it is disgracefully old to have the mumps—or so Sam thought, and he persisted in declaring that he hadn't, while his cheeks swelled and swelled, until his watery smarting eyes were almost concealed; and he was extremely cross when little Ajax assured him that if he felt just as if he were not Sam at all, that was the mumps, because that was the way he felt when he had 'em. Mary Jane, who attended to the family grammar, was somewhat troubled because they all spoke of the disease as plural; but Phineas stoutly maintained that this was proper when you had 'em on both sides at once, like Sam.
He hadn't the mumps, and if he had, he was going to his work at the station that night; that was what Sam insisted, although Mary Jane begged him not to with tears in her eyes, and threatened to tell their mother, from whom they carefully kept every worrying thing, because she was a helpless invalid. It was only at the last moment, when he found that things began to whirl around him and his knees to shake, when he tried to get to the door, that Sam gave up, and said he supposed Phineas would have to go in his place.
"It is so fortunate," said Mary Jane, "that Phineas knows how."
"But he's such a sleepy-head. I ought to have asked the company to appoint a substitute. It's irregular, anyway, and if anything should happen—!" groaned Sam.
He was one who felt his responsibilities, and mumps are not conducive to cheerful views. As for Phineas, he felt that at last the boy and the opportunity had met. Phineas had been repressed—kept in the background all too long, in his own opinion, first by the supposed superior "smartness" of Sam, and second by the continual tutelage of his twin sister Mary Jane. Her whole attention seemed to be given to the subject of what a boy ought not to do; after a time this becomes wearing upon the boy. Perhaps Mary Jane had come to assume this unpleasant superiority because a heavy twin-sisterly duty constantly devolved upon her—keeping Phineas awake; in the history class, in the long prayer, when Uncle Samuel came, periodically, to give them good advice, Mary Jane found it always necessary to keep her eye on Phineas and the sharpest elbow in Orinoco in readiness.
At first Mary Jane had said that he ought not to learn telegraphy, because he could not keep awake; but when he persisted, she came to share his optimistic belief that it would keep him awake. But perhaps Sam's groan was not without its excuse; certainly no one disputed that Phineas was "a sleepy-head."
"I tell you it's hard for even an old stager to keep awake all night long"—Sam had been an operator for two months—"even when he's had some sleep in the daytime, as you haven't. It won't do for you to sit down at all, you know; or if you get all tired out walking round, sit on the tall three-legged stool out in the middle of the floor; if you get to nodding, that will tip over. I've fallen asleep once or twice, but it has waked me when my office has been called on the wire. It wouldn't wake you!"
"It won't have a chance, because I sha'n't be asleep," said Phineas, stoutly.
"Your eyesight is good, isn't it, Phin?"
"Well, I rather guess!" said Phineas, indignantly.
"You have to swing a red or a white lantern. I shall be glad when we have the semaphore signals on our road." (Sam's easy use of learned technical expressions always caused Mary Jane's mouth to open wide with admiration.) "I say, Phin, what color are Mary Jane's mittens?" Sam asked this question with sudden breathless eagerness. "A new operator, who was color-blind, wrecked the Northern Express on the L—— road!"
"Red," said Phineas, with scornful promptness, and was then forced to pass an examination in all the colors of Mary Jane's hooked rug.
"And if there's anything you don't understand, you can ask Lon Brophy in the ticket-office." Sam fell back on the lounge, with a long sigh, as he gave Phineas this parting assurance.
But Mary Jane ran out to the gate after him. "Don't[Pg 343] sit down even on the three-legged stool. It might go over and you wouldn't wake. Think of the boy that stood on the burning deck, or the one that let the fox gnaw him, whenever you feel sleepy." Along with this stern advice Mary Jane forced upon Phineas a dainty lunch that she had prepared, and a can of coffee, which he could heat upon the station stove.
After all, Mary Jane was a good sister, and perhaps she did not deserve that Phineas should mutter, as he walked along, that it was a mistake for a girl to think herself so smart.
As Phin walked toward the station in the bracing air of the November night, he was hotly resentful of the distrust that had been shown of his ability to take Sam's place for just one night.
The station at Orinoco Junction was a lively place when Phineas relieved Tom Woolley, the day operator, at six o'clock. At that time many trains stopped, and they were crowded, because there was a great political gathering at L——, twenty miles farther on. The little restaurant was filled with a jostling crowd. The sharp cries of the popcorn boys mingled with political announcements and a running fire of boasts and jokes.
Tom Woolley took down his overcoat from its nail with a sigh of relief.
"They've kept me at it all day," he said.
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............