“I thought you had a good idea of the matter. Not as a trained expert, of course, but enough to manage a simple affair like the one in question. Dr. Sterling told me that you were often pottering about the machine shops in Newburgh and had picked up some good notions about steam and its force. He thought you might, eventually, turn your attention to such a line of work. From the beginning I had you in mind as helping Dolly to carry out her pleasant autumn plans.”
“I’d likely enough blow up the whole concern—through dumb ignorance. And—and—I was going to study double hard. I do want to get to college next year!”
“This trip will help you. I wish I could take it myself, though I couldn’t manage even a tiny engine. Besides, lad, as I understand, the ‘Water Lily’ doesn’t wholly depend upon steam for her ‘power.’ She—but you’ll find out in two minutes of inspection more than I can suggest in an hour. If you take the seven-thirty train to New York, to-morrow morning, you can reach Baltimore by three in the afternoon, easily enough. ‘James Barlow. Been given house-boat. You’re engineer. Be Union Station, three, Wednesday.’ Signed: ‘Dorothy.’”
This was the short dispatch which Mr. Winters now re-read, aloud, with the comment:
“The child is learning to condense. She’s got this message down to the regulation ten-words-for-a-quarter.”
Then he crossed to the bookcase and began to select certain volumes from its shelves, while Jim watched eagerly, almost hungrily. One after another, these were the beloved books whose contents he had hoped to master during the weeks to come. To see them now from the outside only was fresh disappointment and he rose to leave, saying:
“Well, if I must I must an’ no bones about it. I wouldn’t stir hand nor foot, ’cept it’s Mrs. Calvert and——”
“Don’t leave out Dolly Doodles, boy! She was your first friend among us all, and your first little teacher in the art of spelling. Oh! I know. Of course, such a boy as you would have learned, anyway, but ‘Praise the bridge that carries you safe over.’ Dorothy was the first ‘bridge’ between you and these volumes, in those far-back days when you both picked strawberries on Miranda Stott’s truck-farm. There. I think these will be all you can do justice to before you come back. There’s an old ‘telescope’ satchel of mine in the inner closet that will hold them nicely. Fetch it and be off with you.”