out with the help of the hand extinguishers before it did
any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but while it
lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous. Anyway, it
was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got into Big
Cloud--and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the next
morning in the super's office.

Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his lips
straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his brier, and
stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who was sitting
in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back pocket for
his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin, as the two
came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's desk--Hawkeye,
six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles trailing him,
mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all.

Carleton didn't ask many questions--he'd asked them before--of Bob
Donkin--and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the
conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict
disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he
meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did--in a way
that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster didn't
appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before he was
half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was looking
for something else--besides a galling and matter-of-fact impartiality
that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly the same plane
and level.

"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can divide up
the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs, unless
you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?"

He waited for an answer.

Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan, having
caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles, whose head
barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the whole of him
sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's pocket, was
equally silent--Toddles was thinking of something else.

"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous
incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have
you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip."

There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got some
of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way.