CHAPTER II.FRANK AND HIS FRIENDS.
The band played two pieces in front of the Thalia Theater. The man who was handling the “fierce and untamed bloodhounds” skillfully succeeded in getting all three of them into a fight, appearing nearly frightened to death over it. The donkey walked into the midst of the dogs and separated them by taking the aggressor in his teeth and pulling him away, and Barnaby Haley was well satisfied with the advertising he would receive on account of all this.
Frank, looking on, understood that the same things happened in nearly every town visited by the company.
The donkey was to be taken into the theater by the stage entrance, but Hans found a chance to say to Frank:
“Shust vait here till dot theater comes oudt uf me. I vill peen righdt pack a minute in.”
Ephraim induced one of the musicians to take charge of his horn, and remained with Frank.
Hans soon reappeared.
“Now shust you took dot tinner to me,” invited the Dutch lad. “I pelief a square meal can eadt me a minute in.”
“Eat!” cried the Vermont lad. “Why, that Dutch sausage can eat any gol darn time an’ all the gol darn time! Never see northing like him in all my born days.”
“Oh, shust shut yourseluf ub!” cried Hans, quickly. “Your mouth dalks too much mit you. You don’d peen no ganary pird to eadt. You vos aple to ged der oudtside uf a whole lot.”
“Waal, b’gosh! these air howtels we stop at some of um have pritty blamed poor grub,” confessed the Yankee youth. “Their beefsteak is made of luther, an’ their bread might be bought up by ther loaf an’ used fer pavin’-stuns on the streets.”
“Well, I think I’ll be able to give you something to eat that you can digest, but you mustn’t expect too much.”
“We kin eat any old thing with you, Frank,” declared Ephraim. “Why, when we was campin’ aout at Fardale last summer we hed appetites like hosses, an’ it didn’t make no diffrunce whut there was to eat, we jest et it.”
“Yaw,” nodded Hans; “und some uf der things vot vasn’t to eadt we shust eated all der same.”
“But naow we want yeou to tell us haow it happens yeou are here, Frank,” urged Ephraim, as they walked along together.
Frank, who had formerly been a schoolmate of the boys at Fardale Academy, after which he had gone to Yale, briefly explained that he had been forced to leave college on account of the loss of his fortune, and was now making his own way in the world. The boys knew he had left college, but they had not heard he was working on a railroad. Both were astonished.
“Darn my turnups!” cried Ephraim.
“Shimminy Gristmas!” gurgled Hans.
“Whut yeou been doin’ on the railroad?”
“Running an engine,” explained Merry.
“Runnin’ it? Haow?”
“Engineer.”
“Vot?” gasped Hans.
“Come off!” palpitated Ephraim.
“I have come off,” smiled Frank. “I am out of a job now.”
“Haow is that?”
“Railroad made a reduction of wages, there was a strike, big fight over it, rival road scooped all the business, my road went to pieces.”
“An’ naow—whut?”
“The rival road has scooped the road I worked on—absorbed it. A lot of old engineers have taken the places of the men who used to run on the Blue Mountain road. I’ve been trying for a show, but I’m so young they don’t want to give me anything. Looks like I’d have to get out of here and strike for something somewhere else.”
“Waal, that’s too darn bad!” drawled Ephraim, sympathetically. “But haow’d you ever git to be ingineer, anyhaow?”
“Worked my way up. Began as engine-wiper in the roundhouse, got to be fireman, then engineer. Right there came the trouble, and now I’m on the rocks.”
The eyes of the Vermonter glistened.
“If the hanged old railroad hadn’t went up the spaout, you’d bin runnin’ that in a year!” he cried.
“Yaw,” nodded Hans.
“Yeou’re a hummer!” declared Ephraim. “Yeou’ve got lots of git there in ye, an’ that’s whut does the trick. But I swan to man, it must have seemed tough to yeou to have to git right aout an’ work like a Trojan.”
“Yaw,” put in the Dutch boy. “Vork nefer had nottinks to done mit you pefore dot.”
“I don’t see haow yeou brought yerself to it.”
Frank looked grave and not exactly pleased.
“I have always expected to work when the time came,” he asserted. “I hope you didn’t suppose for a moment that I was going to spend my life in idleness?”
“Oh, no, no!” the Vermonter hastily cried; “but yeou wan’t reddy. Yeou was in college an’ havin’ a slappin’ good time. It was mighty rough to have ter break right off from that all to once an’ git out an’ dig fer a livin’.”
“Well,” said Merry, slowly, “I will admit that it was not pleasant at first; but I made up my mind that it was to be done, and I went at it heartily. After a time, I came to enjoy it as I never enjoyed anything before.”
“Whut! Yeou don’t mean to say yeou liked it better than playin’ baseball?”
“Yes!”
“Jee-roo-sa-lum!”
“Better than anything. Work is the greatest sport in the world, for it is a game at which one plays to win the prize of his life. The winning of all other games are tame in comparison with this. It draws out the best qualities in a man, it tests him as nothing else can. Oh, yes, work is the champion sport, and success is the prize for which all earnest workers strive. The man who shirks and fears honest work can never succeed in the world. Determined men will push him aside, and he will be with the losers at the end of the great game.”
Ephraim Gallup clapped Frank on the shoulder familiarly.
“Yeou are yerself, b’gosh!” he cried. “I kin see that yeou are soberer an’ stiddyer, but yeou are Frank Merriwell jest the same. Yeou was alwus sayin’ things like that that no other feller ever thought to say. There ain’t no danger but yeou’ll be with the winner in this game yeou’re talkin’ abaout.”
“Uf der vinners don’d peen mit him they vill peen der wrong side on,” asserted Hans.
“Come in here,” he said, “and I will introduce you to a particular friend.”
He led them into the small fruit and cigar store in front of which he had been standing when the donkey ran away from Hans.