.G. She's bin switchin' in the B. & A. yards for
six months, when she wasn't in the shops. She's economical (I call it
mean) in her coal, but she takes it out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you
found Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New York season?"

"I am never so well occupied as when I am alone." The Compound seemed to
be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.

"Sure," said the irreverent Poney, under his breath. "They don't hanker
after her any in the yard."

"But, with my constitution and temperament--my work lies in Boston--I
find your outrecuidance--"

"Outer which?" said the Mogul freight. "Simple cylinders are good enough
for me."

"Perhaps I should have said faroucherie," hissed the Compound.

"I don't hold with any make of papier-mache wheel," the Mogul insisted.

The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more.

"Git 'em all shapes in this world, don't ye?" said Poney, "that's
Mass'chusetts all over. They half start, an' then they stick on a
dead-centre, an' blame it all on other folk's ways o' treatin' them.
Talkin' o' Boston, Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box just
beyond the Newtons, Friday. That was why, he says, the Accommodation was
held up. Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did."

"If I'd heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs, I'd
know 't was one o' Comanche's lies," the New Jersey commuter snapped.
"Hot-box! Him! What happened was they'd put an extra car on, and he just
lay down on the grade and squealed. They had to send 127 to help him
through. Made it out a hotbox, did he? Time before that he said he was
ditched! Looked me square in the headlight and told me that as
cool as--as a water-tank in a cold wave. Hot-box! You ask 127 about
Comanche's hot-box. Why, Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (he was
just about as mad as they make 'em on account o' being called out at
ten o'clock at night) took hold and snapped her into Boston in seventeen
minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! that's what Comanche is."

Then.007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is, for
he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?

"Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher. "Make me a
surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels.
Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs' mechanical toys!
Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a hot-box is!
Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't k