“Tell Mrs. Brown to pack the eggs in sawdust as she did the last ones, and the chances of their breaking will be small,” were the last words Mrs. Horner called out after him as he jumped into his saddle and rode away.
Dick was very proud of his little mother, and of late she had been made happy in noticing what a great change had come over her boy. He had always been considerate of her comfort, but at the same time frequently caused her gentle heart to bleed through the tricks he so dearly loved to play. But all that seemed to have undergone a great change since he had joined the Boys’ Department of the Y. M. C. A.
Dick managed to reach the Brown farm without a puncture, though he more than half expected one at any moment. The eggs were duly packed in his basket, and the farmer’s wife saw to it that the messenger had a slice of gingerbread as well as a glass of cold milk while he sat a few minutes and watched her place the fragile eggs in the sawdust.
“I guess I’ll take the other road home,” Dick told himself, as he trundled his rather dilapidated wheel out through the gateway on to the road.
It was but an idle fancy, because every road for many miles around Cliffwood was as familiar to Dick as the commons in the center of the town. At the time he could not guess that even this little change of plan was fated to be fraught with consequences that were bound to have a decided influence on his life; yet such proved to be the case.
Hardly had the boy gone three hundred feet from the gate of the Brown farm when he had the expected puncture. The tires on his wheel had been mended so often that they could never be depended on; and Dick found it hard work earning enough money to buy himself a new pair at the sporting goods store in town.
“Just my luck to have it hit the rear wheel,” he remarked, as he jumped down, not forgetting to be exceedingly careful how he handled that precious basket of new-laid eggs.
As he could not very well ride on the rim the rest of the way home there was only one thing left to do, which was to trudge along on foot. Dick was rather a philosophical boy, and could accept a bad turn without showing very much chagrin. So whistling some school air he walked sturdily onward.
Less than ten minutes later, while near the outskirts of the town, he came upon a tramp, as he believed, sitting under a tree. At least the man seemed poorly dressed, and his beard was gray, and Dick imagined he looked wan and hungry, as if he might have been recently sick.
The man stopped Dick as he was passing, after nodding cheerfully. Perhaps something in the frank look of the boy’s face attracted him.