For instance, when Russ invented some brand new and charming, simple
play for all to join in, Philly and Alice and Frane just drifted away
and would have nothing to do with it. They were too polite to criticize;
but Russ knew that the Armatage children felt themselves "too grown up"
to be interested in the building of a steamboat or the driving of an
imaginary motor-car.

His little brothers and sisters, however, were constantly teasing Russ
to make something new. They enjoyed traveling in reality so much, did
the six little Bunkers, that, as Daddy laughingly said, traveling in a
wheelbarrow would have amused them.

So this day when Russ made a whole freight train with empty chicken
coops, with a caboose at the end and a big engine in front, only Frane
took an interest in it aside from the Bunkers themselves. And perhaps
his interest was, only held because Russ agreed to make him the engineer
while Laddie was fireman.

As for Russ himself, he was the conductor at the end of the long train.
He had to explain very plainly that of course a freight train had a
conductor. Every train had to have a "skipper" just like a boat. A
railroad man had explained all that to Russ Bunker when the family was
on its way to Cowboy Jack's early in the autumn.

"And you-all," said Russ, copying Frane's speech, speaking to the little
ones and Rose, "must stay back here with me and be brakemen. When we
need the handbrakes, I'll tell you, and you run forward over the
coops--I mean the cars--and set the brakes."

"But suppose we get flung off?" asked Vi.