Christmas Every Day | Page 9

lifted her head from the papa's shoulder, where she had
dropped it. "Is it a sad story, papa?"
"How is it going to end?" asked the boy.
"Well, it's got a moral," said the papa.
"Oh, all right, if it's got a moral," said the children; they had a good
deal of fun with the morals the papa put to his stories. The boy added,
"Go on," and the little girl prompted, "Car-house."
The papa said, "Now every time you stop me I shall have to begin all
over again." But he saw that this was not going to spite them any, so he
went on: "One of the locomotives was its mother, and she had got hurt
once in a big smash-up, so that she couldn't run long trips any more.
She was so weak in the chest you could hear her wheeze as far as you
could see her. But she could work round the depot, and pull empty cars
in and out, and shunt them off on the side tracks; and she was so
anxious to be useful that all the other engines respected her, and they
were very kind to the little Pony Engine on her account, though it was
always getting in the way, and under their wheels, and everything.
They all knew it was an orphan, for before its mother got hurt its father
went through a bridge one dark night into an arm of the sea, and was
never heard of again; he was supposed to have been drowned. The old
mother locomotive used to say that it would never have happened if she
had been there; but poor dear No. 236 was always so venturesome, and
she had warned him against that very bridge time and again. Then she
would whistle so dolefully, and sigh with her air-brakes enough to
make anybody cry. You see they used to be a very happy family when
they were all together, before the papa locomotive got drowned. He
was very fond of the little Pony Engine, and told it stories at night after
they got into the car-house, at the end of some of his long runs. It

would get up on his cow-catcher, and lean its chimney up against his,
and listen till it fell asleep. Then he would put it softly down, and be off
again in the morning before it was awake. I tell you, those were happy
days for poor No. 236. The little Pony Engine could just remember him;
it was awfully proud of its papa."
The boy lifted his head and looked at the little girl, who suddenly hid
her face in the papa's other shoulder. "Well, I declare, papa, she was
putting up her lip."
"I wasn't, any such thing!" said the little girl. "And I don't care! So!"
and then she sobbed.
"Now, never you mind," said the papa to the boy. "You'll be putting up
your lip before I'm through. Well, and then she used to caution the little
Pony Engine against getting in the way of the big locomotives, and told
it to keep close round after her, and try to do all it could to learn about
shifting empty cars. You see, she knew how ambitious the little Pony
Engine was, and how it wasn't contented a bit just to grow up in the
pony-engine business, and be tied down to the depot all its days. Once
she happened to tell it that if it was good and always did what it was
bid, perhaps a cow-catcher would grow on it some day, and then it
could be a passenger locomotive. Mammas have to promise all sorts of
things, and she was almost distracted when she said that."
"I don't think she ought to have deceived it, papa," said the boy. "But it
ought to have known that if it was a Pony Engine to begin with, it never
could have a cow-catcher."
"Couldn't it?" asked the little girl, gently.
"No; they're kind of mooley."
The little girl asked the papa, "What makes Pony Engines mooley?" for
she did not choose to be told by her brother; he was only two years
older than she was, anyway.
"Well; it's pretty hard to say. You see, when a locomotive is first

hatched--"
"Oh, are they hatched, papa?" asked the boy.
"Well, we'll call it hatched," said the papa; but they knew he was just
funning. "They're about the size of tea-kettles at first; and it's a chance
whether they will have cow-catchers or not. If they keep their spouts,
they will; and if their spouts drop off, they won't."
"What makes the spout ever drop off?"
"Oh, sometimes the pip, or the gapes--"
The children both began to shake the papa, and he was glad enough to