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“The nightmare? Goodness!” said the boy.

“I’ve had the nightmare,” said the little girl.

“Oh yes, a mere human nightmare,” said the papa. “But a locomotive nightmare is a very different thing.”

“Why, what’s it like?” asked the boy. The little girl was almost afraid to ask.

“Well, it has only one leg, to begin with.”

“Pshaw!”

“Wheel, I mean. And it has four cow-catchers, and four head-lights, and two boilers, and eight whistles, and it just goes whirling and screeching along. Of course it wobbles awfully; and as it’s only got one wheel, it has to keep skipping from one track to the other.”

“I should think it would run on the cross-ties,” said the boy.

“Oh, very well, then!” said the papa. “If you know so much more about it than I do! Who’s telling this story, anyway? Now I shall have to go back to the beginning. Once there was a little Pony En–“

They both put their hands over his mouth, and just fairly begged him to go on, and at last he did. “Well, it got away from the nightmare about morning, but not till the nightmare had bitten a large piece out of its tender, and then it braced up for the home-stretch. It thought that if it could once beat the Express to the Sierras, it could keep the start the rest of the way, for it could get over the mountains quicker than the Express could, and it might be in San Francisco before the Express got to Sacramento. The Express kept gaining on it. But it just zipped along the upper edge of Kansas and the lower edge of Nebraska, and on through Colorado and Utah and Nevada, and when it got to the Sierras it just stooped a little, and went over them like a goat; it did, truly; just doubled up its fore wheels under it, and jumped. And the Express kept gaining on it. By this time it couldn’t say ‘Pacific Express’ any more, and it didn’t try. It just said ‘Express! Express!’ and then ”Press! ‘Press!’ and then ”Ess! ‘Ess!’ and pretty soon only ”Ss! ‘Ss!’ And the Express kept gaining on it. Before they reached San Francisco, the Express locomotive’s cow-catcher was almost touching the Pony Engine’s tender; it gave one howl of anguish as it felt the Express locomotive’s hot breath on the place where the nightmare had bitten the piece out, and tore through the end of the San Francisco depot, and plunged into the Pacific Ocean, and was never seen again. There, now,” said the papa, trying to make the children get down, “that’s all. Go to bed.” The little girl was crying, and so he tried to comfort her by keeping her in his lap.

The boy cleared his throat. “What is the moral, papa?” he asked, huskily.

“Children, obey your parents,” said the papa.

“And what became of the mother locomotive?” pursued the boy.

“She had a brain-fever, and never quite recovered the use of her mind again.”

The boy thought awhile. “Well, I don’t see what it had to do with Christmas, anyway.”

“Why, it was Christmas Eve when the Pony Engine started from Boston, and Christmas afternoon when it reached San Francisco.”

“Ho!” said the boy. “No locomotive could get across the continent in a day and a night, let alone a little Pony Engine.”

“But this Pony Engine had to. Did you never hear of the beaver that clomb the tree?”

“No! Tell–“

“Yes, some other time.”

“But how could it get across so quick? Just one day!”

“Well, perhaps it was a year. Maybe it was the next Christmas after that when it got to San Francisco.”

The papa set the little girl down, and started to run out of the room, and both of the children ran after him, to pound him.

When they were in bed the boy called down-stairs to the papa, “Well, anyway, I didn’t put up my lip.”