"I tell you I can't; he's--"

"Ask any driver or fireman on the road, and if he don't slip you one with a
shovel for your withering ignorance he'll tell you just what I'm telling
you now. Yes, you and your funny friend."

"Look here, GEORGE STEPHENSON has been--"

"Let your funny friend try running into a cow just for 'speriment. Just let
him try it once. They tangle up in your bogies, all slippery bones and
hide, slither along with you a yard or two, and the next thing you know is
you're over an embankment and your widder is putting in for insurance. Tell
your pal George from me."

The brakes ground on and the lights of a station flickered past the
windows.

"My gosh!" exclaimed the red-headed man, springing to his feet, "this is
Cullumpton, and I ought to have got out at the station before." He wrestled
with the door-handle. "And it's all through sitting here listening to your
everlasting damfool chatter about you and your friend George."

"Who died forty years before I was born," said I. "Good night."

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Robinson._ "IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU CHAPS STARTED TO DO
SOMETHING. HARD WORK NEVER KILLED ANYBODY."