, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man
ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint
was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like
a fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish
parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial--he
had said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead
travelling-crane--the big world was just outside; and the other locos
were taking stock of him. He looked at the semicircle of bold, unwinking
headlights, heard the low purr and mutter of the steam mounting in
the gauges--scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve lifted a
little--and would have given a month's oil for leave to crawl through
his own driving-wheels into the brick ash-pit beneath him. .007 was an
eight-wheeled "American" loco, slightly different from others of his
type, and as he stood he was worth ten thousand dollars on the Company's
books. But if you had bought him at his own valuation, after half an
hour's waiting in the darkish, echoing round-house, you would have
saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and
ninety-eight cents.

A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that came
down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game, speaking
to a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.

"Where did this thing blow in from?" he asked, with a dreamy puff of
light steam.

"it's all I can do to keep track of our makes," was the answer, "without
lookin' after your back-numbers. Guess it's something Peter Cooper left
over when he died."

.007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even
a hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper
experimented upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and
water in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.

Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step
in front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he
looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.

"Something's wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher tells
us anything about our stock, I think. That kid's all right. Eustis
designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain't that good enough?"

.007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his tender,
but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.

"We don't use hand-cars on