The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1906-08-20
'HE JUST CAME AND TOOK HIS SCORN AND
JOKED AND LAUGHED.

wore rough clothes, which showed he
want afraid to work and never thought
about how he looked.
$50 when Jim Furness saw her from
his baggage off and lost his ticket just
through crazy idea of winning her
Lois turned him down so quick that
didn't have chance to say word,
mad as I was. You know how Lois
is when she's stirred up like this. She
just looks and turns away, and there's
no need for her nor anybody else to say
a word.
"Well, with other folks that would
have ended it, but Jim he just turned
round and got job firing on local
engine that helped pull freight up our
side Of the divide. You see, he seemed
to understand by instinct that Lois and
l believed in work and didn't care for
dressed up effect. But, pshaw! You
know how it is with Jim. Put him on
the dirtiest job going and his hands
will stay white and soft like girls,
and the toughest clothes ever was have
a way of hanging on him like they
were tailor made, and, as to his voice,
if you turned his engine end over and
down the mountain, when it got to the
bottom Jim's voice, if he had any left,
would be as soft and drawing as ever.
1--WE saw a good deal of Jim now, for,
with me as station agent and our liv-
ing rooms upstairs, Lois and l We're
sort of chums with everything on the
railroad. Maybe that was what started
Jim to getting his job so quick and
having it so he could switch back and
forth in front of the station every few
hours and stay in our town over night.
Maybe he figured that just being a
railroad man would be a sort of rec
ommendation.
But if so it didn't seem to help him
much There were big, strapping engi-
neers on the road who had done things,
risked life and looked square at death
without winking, and there were con-
ductors and section bosses and one To-
cal superintendent and passenger
agent who liked Lois and who would
have been glad for her to have liked
them, and nearly all had done things.
You see, our section right along here is
ployees who have been on it few years
and are not killed have stories to tell.
Now but Lois hates personal talk
that touches on brag, so it doesn't mat
ter.
'But, as / was saying. pretty much
the whole road liked Lois, and Lois
she liked the whole road as a whole.
but wouldn't single out any one in par
ticular. And, aS for Jim, she scOrned
him openly, and he knew it.
'Now, l didn't like Jim myself, so Of
course 1 couldn't feel the pity for him
that 1 would for anybody else. But
pshaw! If he felt it he never showed
by any signs. He just came and took
his scorn and joked and laughed and
made us laugh and then came back for
more. scorn the very next time his en-
CINE pulled in. Now, l ask candidly
what can you do with fellow like
that? The others laughed at him. and
ne IauSHeU VIII IueAu. AueH d1lci d
while some of the more rough ones,
thinking him soft and good natured and
without backbone, went little too far.
and his white fingers closed together
like steel springs, and more than one
Of them had to lay off for repairs. But
Jim didn't seem to hold any grudges.
He laughed and talked to those who
treated him the worst until they had
to laugh and talk back, and then the