He was a train boy of a type I had
supposed extinct: the kind of train boy one might have encountered on
almost any second-rate train twenty years ago,--a bold, impudent young
smartaleck, full of insistent salesmanship and obnoxious conversation.
He declared that dinner was not to be had, and that the only sustenance
available en route consisted in the uninviting assortment of fruit,
nuts, candy, and sweet tepid beverages contained in his basket.
Fortunately for us, the man we had addressed knew better.
"What do you want to lie like that for, boy?" he demanded. "You know as
well as I do that the brakeman takes on five boxes of lunch at Covin."
"Well," said the boy, with a grin, "I gotta sell things, ain't I? The
brakeman hadn't oughta have that graft anyhow. _I'd_ oughta have it. He
gets them lunches fer two bits and sells 'em for thirty-five cents." Far
from feeling abashed, he was pleased with himself.
"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who
sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in
particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when
they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready,
and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be
so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do.
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