[CHAPTER XVI]
OFF TO HARRISVILLE
At a quarter to six the next afternoon Wayne sat in a red plush seat in the Harrisville train and watched the outskirts of Medfield drop behind. He had his ticket to Harrisville and return in his pocket and nearly eighteen dollars folded away in his old leather coin purse. His luggage reposed beside him in a small brown paper parcel, for he was travelling in light marching order. For some reason, June had failed to show up at the station to say good-bye, and Wayne was a little bit resentful. He thought June might have found the time to see him off.
It had been a busy day. Rather to his surprise, he had awakened with the question fully decided. He would go to Harrisville and talk with the manager of the baseball team. Whether he stayed or not would depend on whether he made good and what salary was offered him. He would not, he told himself firmly, accept less than a hundred dollars a month. The talk with Chris Farrel had been fairly satisfactory. Arthur Pattern had failed to elicit any definite promise of engagement from the scout, but he had made Mr. Farrel agree to supplement the letter of introduction which Wayne was to deliver with another, to be posted then and there, presenting Wayne’s qualifications and advising his employment. After that Wayne had accepted the ten dollars, shaken hands with Mr. Farrel, and returned to the freight house to apply to Jim Mason for a three days’ leave of absence.
Jim had given his permission quickly enough, but had shown little enthusiasm for the boy’s project. Playing baseball for a living did not, to his thinking, contrast at all favourably with working for the railroad, and he didn’t hesitate to say so. In fact, he was decidedly pessimistic and gloomy until Wayne reminded him that there was a strong possibility of his not securing the position after he reached Harrisville. Jim cheered up after that and chose to look on the three days’ absence as a sort of brief vacation, and virtually despatched Wayne with his blessing when closing time arrived.
“Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “I’ll get on all right. It ain’t but two days and a half, anyway. Just you have a good time and enjoy yourself, son. Better come around for dinner Sunday and tell us about your trip.”
Wayne promised to do this in the event of his return, shook hands with Jim, feeling a bit guilty and more than half hoping that the manager of the Harrisville Baseball Club would send him home again, and hurried off to the train. Arthur Pattern had promised to get down to see him off if he could do it, but evidently Arthur had had to stay late this evening. The train was in the open country now, running between wooded hills on which the long, slanting rays of the setting sun fell gloriously. He was a little lonesome and wished he had taken Sam with him. After all, Sam wouldn’t have been much trouble, and he was a heap of company. And just then the door at the front end of the car opened and in walked June with a squirming, excited Sam in his arms!
June was grinning broadly, but there was something anxious and apologetic about that grin. After his first gasp of surprise, Wayne wanted to be stern and severe, but he just couldn’t because it was so good to have June and Sam there! And, anyway, you couldn’t frown or be cross with a delirious dog in your lap trying to lick your face and whine his delight at the same time! And so Wayne gave it up, and only smiled a trifle sheepishly, and June, seeing that he was not to be scolded, hugged himself, and grinned harder than ever.
The conductor interrupted the reunion with a request for tickets and a demand that the dog be removed to the baggage car, and so the three of them made their way forward and Sam was once more secured to the handle of a trunk with a piece of cord and Wayne and June perched themselves alongside and so finished their journey. June, it seemed, had at no time entertained any notion of being left behind, but had thrown up his job at the hotel that morning, staying only long enough to break in one of his recently made friends, and had then gone back to the car to pack up. Wayne’s belongings were here in a pasteboard box and June’s tied up in paper. “I done fasten up the place,” said June, “an’ nail boards over the windows, an’ I reckon if we-all wants to go back there we’s goin’ to fin’ things jus’ the same like we left ’em. An’ I done water them tomatuses an’ everything too, Mas’ Wayne.”