he mother locomotive certainly oughtn't to
have deceived it. Still she had to say _something_, and perhaps the
little Pony Engine was better employed watching its buffers with its
head-light, to see whether its cow-catcher had begun to grow, than it
would have been in listening to the stories of the old locomotives, and
sometimes their swearing."

"Do they swear, papa?" asked the little girl, somewhat shocked, and yet
pleased.

"Well, I never heard them, _near by_. But it sounds a good deal like
swearing when you hear them on the up-grade on our hill in the night.
Where was I?"

"Swearing," said the boy. "And please don't go back, now, papa."

"Well, I won't. It'll be as much as I can do to get through this story,
without going over any of it again. Well, the thing that the little Pony
Engine wanted to be, the most in this world, was the locomotive of the
Pacific Express, that starts out every afternoon at three, you know. It
intended to apply for the place as soon as its cow-catcher was grown,
and it was always trying to attract the locomotive's attention, backing
and filling on the track alongside of the train; and once it raced it a
little piece, and beat it, before the Express locomotive was under way,
and almost got in front of it on a switch. My, but its mother was
scared! She just yelled to it with her whistle; and that night she sent
it to sleep without a particle of coal or water in its tender.

"But the little Pony Engine didn't care. It had beaten the Pacific
Express in a hundred yards, and what was to hinder it from beating it as
long as it chose? The little Pony Engine could not get it out of its
head. It was just like a boy who thinks he can whip a man."

The boy lifted his head. "Well, a boy _can_, papa, if he goes to do it
the right way. Just stoop down before the man knows it, and catch him by
the legs and tip him right over."

"Ho! I guess you see yourself!" said the little girl, scornfully.

"Well, I _could_!" said the boy; "and some day I'll just show you."

"Now, little cock-sparrow, now!" said the papa; and he laughed. "Well,
the little Pony Engine thought he could beat the Pacific Express,
anyway; and so one dark, snowy, blowy afternoon, when his mother was off
pushing some empty coal cars up past the Know-Nothing crossing beyond
Charlestown, he got on the track in front of the Express, and when he
heard the conductor say 'All aboard,' and the starting gong struck, and
the brakemen leane