o
was as thin and saturnine as the engineer was stout and good-humored.
"Boys need correction."

"I'll allow you're right," said the engineer. "But it ain't my business
to 'it Billy for 's own good. Bein' own brother to 'is sister's
'usband--it's plainly your place to give 'im wot for if 'e 'appens to
need it."

The stoker grunted and the clock belonging to the Anglo-Norman church
tower of the village struck six. Both the engineer and his subordinate
wiped their dewy foreheads with their blackened hands, and
simultaneously thought of beer.

"Us bein' goin' up to Bensley for a bit, me an' George," said the
engineer, "an' supposin' Farmer Shrubb should come worritin' along this
way and ask where us are, what be you a-going to tell 'im, Billy boy?"

"The truth, I 'ope," said the stoker, with a vicious look in an eye
which was naturally small and artificially bilious.

"Ah, but wot is the truth to be, this time?" queried the engineer.
"Let's git it settled before we go. As far as I'm consarned, the answer
Billy's to give in regards to my question o' my whereabouts is:
'Anywhere but in the tap o' the Red Cow.'"

"And everythink but decently drunk," retorted the stoker.

"That's about it," assented the unsuspecting engineer.

The stoker laughed truculently, and Billy ventured upon a faint echo of
the jeering cachinnation. The grin died from the boy's face, however, as
the engineer promptly relieved a dawning sense of injury by cuffing him
upon one side of the head, while the stoker wrung the ear upon the
other.

"Ow, hoo," wailed Billy, stanching his flowing tears in the ample sleeve
of his coat, "Ow, hoo, hoo!"

"Stop that blubberin', you," commanded the stoker, who possessed a
delicate ear, "and make th' fire an' git th' tea ready against Alfred
and me gits back. You hear me?"

"Yes, plaize," whimpered Billy.

"An' mind you warms up the cold bacon pie," added the stoker.

"And don't you forget to knock in the top of that tin o' salmon," added
the engineer, "an' set it on to stew a bit. An' don't you git pickin'
the loaf wi' they mucky black fingers o' yours, Billy, my lad, or you'll
suffer for it when I comes home."

"Yes, plaize," gasped Billy, bravely swallowing the recurrent hiccough
of grief. "An' plaize where be I to build fire?"

"The fire," mused the engineer. He looked at the crimson ball of the
sun, now drowning in a lake of ruddy vapors behind the belt of elms; he
nodded appreciatively at the p