yes, trouble once started makes the measles look as though it were
out of training, and couldn't stand the first round. To go into
details would take more space than a treatise on the manners and
customs of the early Moabites; but, summed up, it was something like
this: Mrs. Beezer paid another visit to Mrs. MacAllister, magnanimously
ignoring the social obligation Mrs. MacAllister was under to repay the
former call. Mrs. MacAllister received Mrs. Beezer in the kitchen over
the washtubs, which was just as well for the sake of the rest of the
house, for when Mrs. Beezer withdrew, somewhat shattered, but in good
order, by a flank movement through the back yard, an impartial observer
would have said that the kitchen had been wrecked by a gas explosion.
This brought Big Cloud's one lawyer and the Justice of the Peace into
it, and cost Beezer everything but the odd change on his month's pay
check--when it came.

Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home,
Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and
shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer,
not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no
aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him
"Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer--out
of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop,
got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor
Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to
Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office
down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the
fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the
company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy
Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation
mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and
wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and
squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right;
but it didn't go--you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound
expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the
company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by
the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone,
and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was.
Considering everyt