“What’s that?” inquired MacDonald. “Dere iss five doughnuts dot iss paid for not.” “Oh!” said MacDonald. “Dot vas der time you told dot it vas Thornley--yess? Dot vas von dollar py each. Veil, I vant dot--yess?” “Really!” laughed MacDonald. “Well, I guess _not!_” “Dot--vas--der--time”--Dutchy was raising his voice, each word growing louder and more distinct than the preceding one. Thornley’s chair inside creaked ominously. MacDonald glanced furtively toward the door, and his face grew red--“you--told--dot----” With a hasty movement, MacDonald clapped one hand over Dutchy’s mouth, and with the other thrust a five-dollar bill into his fingers. “Get out!” he choked, and shoved Dutchy violently toward the stairs. At the bottom, Dutchy halted, turned and looked up with a grin. “Py golly,” said he, “I shusht thought me dot I like jokes pretty good, and I hope dot----” “Oh, shut up!” said MacDonald. XIV--SPECKLES This happened at a period in the history of the Hill Division when trade was very bad, and the directors, scowling over the company’s annual report, threw up their hands in holy horror; while from the sacred precincts of the board-room there emanated the agonized cry: “Economy!” The general manager took up the slogan and dinned it into the ears of the division superintendents. “Operating expenses are too high,” he wrote. “They must be cut down.” And the superintendents of divisions, painfully alive to the fact that the G. M. was not dictating for the mere pleasure of it, intimated in unmistakable language to the heads of departments under them that the next quarterly reports were expected to show a marked improvement. John Healy had charge of the roundhouse at Big Cloud, in those days, and the morning after the lightning struck the system he came fuming back across the yards from his interview with the superintendent, stuttering angrily to himself. As he stamped into the running-shed his humor a shade worse than usual the first object that caught his eye was Speckles, squatted on the lee side of 483, dangling his legs in the pit. That is, it would have been the lee side if Healy had come in the other door. “Cut down operatin’ expinses, is ut?” Healy muttered. “Begorra, I’ll begin right now!” And he fired Speckles on the spot. Now, Speckles--whose name, by the way, was Dolivar Washington Babson--had been fired on several occasions before, and if he swallowed a little more tobacco-juice than was good for his physical comfort it was rather as a gulp of startled surprise at Healy’s appearance than because of any poignant regret at the misfortune that had overtaken him. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent on himself to expostulate. “Git out an’ stay out!” said Healy, refusing to argue. And Speckles got out. For a day he kept away from the roundhouse, the length of time past experience had taught him was required to cool the turner’s anger; then he sauntered down again and came face to face with Healy on the turntable.