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Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn’t an infant in arms–not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near to a wild cat as anything else that comes handy by way of illustration. Two legs and one arm he twined and twisted around Hawkeye’s legs; and the other arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the end of it, caught the conductor a wicked jab in the region of the bottom button of the vest. The brass button peeled the skin off Toddles’ knuckles, but the jab doubled the conductor forward, and coincident with Hawkeye’s winded grunt, the lantern in his hand sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps in the roof of the car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, dripping oil and burning wicks, came the wreckage to the floor.

There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one and sensed the other–and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up around Hawkeye’s knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn’t get at him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle. He was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car.

It came. Toddles’ muscles strained legs and arms and back in concert, and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye staggering in a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium–and then down–speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express parcels; concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs, thirty dozen of them, at forty cents a dozen.

Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster, but still he clung; he didn’t dare let go. Hawkeye’s fists, both in an effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles, were going like a windmill; and Hawkeye’s threats were something terrifying to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was underneath; and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked on Toddles’ collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet.

His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited for Hawkeye to get up–the word “run” wasn’t in Toddles’ vocabulary. He hadn’t long to wait.

Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate–a sight. The road always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but Hawkeye wasn’t dressed in uniform then–mostly egg yolks. He made a dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was between them.

“Cut it out!” said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him. “You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!”

And Hawkeye “cut it out.” It was pretty generally understood that Bob Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye “cut it out.”

Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn’t. True, they got it 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.