"Do we go straight across to the Pennsylvania Station, to take the train for Wilmington, or do we have to wait?"
"I'll—I'll see."
The answer was unsatisfactory. He looked at his father inquiringly. Looking at him, he was hurt to observe that his confidence was departing, that he was again like something with a broken spring.
"Well, we're going to Wilmington to-day, aren't we?"
"I'll—I'll see."
"But," the boy cried in alarm, "where can we go, if we don't?"
"I—I know a place."
It was disappointing. The choking sensation which, when he was younger, used to precede tears, began to gather in his throat. Having heard so much from Mrs. Quidmore of the glories of Wilmington, Delaware, he saw it as a city of palaces, of exquisite, ladylike maidens, of noble youths, of aristocratic joyousness. Moreover, he had been told that to get there you went under the river, through a tunnel so deep down in the earth that you felt a distressful throbbing in the head. The postponement of these experiences even for a day was hard to submit to.
In the Grand Central his father was in a mood he had never before seen. It was a dark mood, at once decided and secretive.