the shriek of a brake-shoe with
everything the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a
quick stop.

Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in
retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and, being
Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a word, Hawkeye,
carrying the punch on the local passenger, that happened to be the run
Toddles was given when the News Company sent him out from the East, used
to think he got a good deal of fun out of Toddles--only his idea of fun
and Toddles' idea of fun were as divergent as the poles, that was all.

Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees--not
even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate, apart
from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had dubbed
him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his heart, his
soul--and his fists.

Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and he was
right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled with the
stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to him, none
knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping that nature
stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his aspirations
for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and got their feet
on the ladder as call-boys, or in the roundhouse; Toddles got--a grin.
Toddles pestered everybody for a job. He pestered Carleton, the super.
He pestered Tommy Regan, the master mechanic. Every time that he saw
anybody in authority Toddles spoke up for a job, he was in deadly
earnest--and got a grin. Toddles with a basket of unripe fruit and stale
chocolates and his "best-seller" voice was one thing; but Toddles as
anything else was just--Toddles.

Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully. Not that he couldn't
take his share of a bit of guying, but because he felt that he was face
to face with a vital factor in the career he longed for--so he fought.
And if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been generous
in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed the heart of a lion and
the strength of a young ox, and he used both, with black and bloody
effect, on the eyes and noses of the call-boys and younger element who
called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line--at the drop of the
hat--at a whisper of "Toddles." There wasn't a day went by that Toddles
wasn't in a row;