“My uncle says it’s bully.”
He sat down alongside of us. “My name’s Collins,” says he—“John Collins.”
He sort of waited, and then I introduced everybody, beginning with Mark Tidd, then Tallow Martin, who was next to him, then Plunk Smalley, and last of all Binney Jenks, which is me.
We talked considerable and speculated on how long we would have to wait and wished there was a lunch-counter handy—especially Mark. Maybe twenty minutes went along before we saw the conductor and yelled at him to know if we were going to have to stay all night.
“Better hustle up to the day coaches,” says he. “I guess we can pull out pretty soon.”
When we got in the car it was pretty crowded, but we four got seats together. Mr. Collins had to take half of a seat quite a ways off from us. I could tell by the way Mark’s eyes looked that he was glad. For some reason or another he’d taken a dislike to the man. I couldn’t see why, because he seemed to me to be pleasant enough for anybody.
I noticed that Mark had a piece of paper in his hand, crumpled up into a ball.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“D-dun’no’. Picked it up outside.”
“Nothin’ but a piece of paper, is it?”