I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes of the hour had gone. I would still have time to jump into a dress suit, but the dinner must be brief. There came a seesaw rocking, then a rebound, and a heavy thud told where the trunk had fallen. The cab sped on round a sharp corner, through a narrow street, and across a wide square.
Suddenly a thought rushed over me that culminated in a creeping chill. Where was his trunk? In my anxiety over my own, I had forgotten the boy's.
I turned quickly to the window, and shouted:—
"Cabby! Cabby, you didn't leave the boy's trunk, too, did you?"
The little fellow slid down from the seat, and began fumbling around in the dark.
"No, sir; I've got 'em here;" and he held up the collar box and brown paper bundle!
"Is that all?" I gasped.
"Oh, no, sir! I got ten cents the lady give me. Do you want to see it?" and he began cramming his chubby hand into his side pocket.
"No, my son, I don't want to see it."
I didn't want to see anything in particular. His word was good enough. I couldn't, really. My eyelashes somehow had got tangled up in each other, and my pupils wouldn't work. It's queer how a man's eyes act sometimes.