at night after they got
into the car-house, at the end of some of his long runs. It would get up
on his cow-catcher, and lean its chimney up against his, and listen till
it fell asleep. Then he would put it softly down, and be off again in
the morning before it was awake. I tell you, those were happy days for
poor No. 236. The little Pony Engine could just remember him; it was
awfully proud of its papa."

The boy lifted his head and looked at the little girl, who suddenly hid
her face in the papa's other shoulder. "Well, I declare, papa, she was
putting up her lip."

"I wasn't, any such thing!" said the little girl. "And I don't care!
So!" and then she sobbed.

"Now, never you mind," said the papa to the boy. "You'll be putting up
_your_ lip before I'm through. Well, and then she used to caution the
little Pony Engine against getting in the way of the big locomotives,
and told it to keep close round after her, and try to do all it could to
learn about shifting empty cars. You see, she knew how ambitious the
little Pony Engine was, and how it wasn't contented a bit just to grow
up in the pony-engine business, and be tied down to the depot all its
days. Once she happened to tell it that if it was good and always did
what it was bid, perhaps a cow-catcher would grow on it some day, and
then it could be a passenger locomotive. Mammas have to promise all
sorts of things, and she was almost distracted when she said that."

"I don't think she ought to have deceived it, papa," said the boy. "But
it ought to have known that if it was a Pony Engine to begin with, it
never could have a cow-catcher."

"Couldn't it?" asked the little girl, gently.

"No; they're kind of mooley."

The little girl asked the papa, "What makes Pony Engines mooley?" for
she did not choose to be told by her brother; he was only two years
older than she was, anyway.

"Well; it's pretty hard to say. You see, when a locomotive is first
hatched--"

"Oh, are they hatched, papa?" asked the boy.

"Well, we'll _call_ it hatched," said the papa; but they knew he was
just funning. "They're about the size of tea-kettles at first; and it's
a chance whether they will have cow-catchers or not. If they keep their
spouts, they will; and if their spouts drop off, they won't."

"What makes the spout ever drop off?"

"Oh, sometimes the pip, or the gapes--"

The children both began to shake the papa, and he was glad enough to go
on sensibly. "Well, anyway, t