gh he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which
was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows.

There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing.
Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration
of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his
irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the
sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and
an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was
appalling.

The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel
thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and
visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was
much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was
a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train
sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers
that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it,
both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels,
and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting
their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for
foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter.

Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started
in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the
local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then
unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller
was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left
the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the
mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and
his eyes strayed around the room.

It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of
railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there
was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any
protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of
the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the
despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and
fixed on the despatcher's back.

His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily
to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious
of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to h