se. Beezer contracted a mild attack of it the first day, but
it wasn't bad enough to trouble him much, or see a doctor about, so he
let it go on--and it got chronic.

Beezer commenced to inhale an entirely different atmosphere, and the
more he inhaled it the more discontented he grew. An engine out in the
roundhouse, warm and full of life, the steam whispering and purring at
her valves, was a very different thing from a cold, rusty, dismantled
boiler-shell jacked up on lumbering blocks in the erecting shop; and
the road talk of specials, holding orders, tissues, running time and
what-not had a much more appealing ring to it than discussing how many
inches of muck No. 414 had accumulated on her guard-plates, the
incidental damning of the species wiper, and whether her boxes wanted
new babbitting or not. Toiling like a slave ten hours a day for six
days a week, and maybe overtime on Sundays, so that the other fellow
could have the fun, and the glory, and the fatter pay check, and the
easy time of it, began to get Beezer's goat. The "other fellow" was
the engineer.

Beezer got to contrasting up the two jobs, and the more he contrasted
the less he liked the looks of his own, and the more he was satisfied
of his superior ability to hold down the other over any one of the
crowd that signed on or off in the grease-smeared pages of the turner's
book, which recorded the comings and goings of the engine crews. And
his ability, according to Beezer's way of looking at it, wasn't all
swelled head either; for there wasn't a bolt or a split-pin in any type
of engine that had ever nosed its pilot on the Hill Division that he
couldn't have put his finger on with his eyes shut. How much, anyhow,
did an engineer know about an engine? There wasn't a fitter in the
shops that didn't have the best engineer that ever pulled a throttle
pinned down with his shoulders flat on the mat on that count--and there
wasn't an engineer but what would admit it, either.

But a routine in which one is brought up, gets married in, and comes to
look upon as a sort of fixed quantity for life, isn't to be departed
from offhand, and at a moment's notice. Beezer grew ardent with envy,
it is true; but the idea of actually switching over from the workbench
to the cab didn't strike him for some time. When it did--the first
time--it took his breath away--literally. He was in the pit, and he
stood up suddenly--and the staybolts on the rocker-arm held, and B