The general manager nodded.
“That’s it; that’s just it,” he said approvingly. “All through the summer, it seems, you’ve been ‘just thinking.’ It’s a good habit; a capital habit; and I hope you’ll go on cultivating it. Have you seen your father or any of your family yet?”
“No, sir; I’m just in on the accommodation from Red Butte. The conductor gave me your wire ordering me to report to you as soon as I reached Brewster, and I came right up here from the train.”
“Good; that was what I wanted you to do. Dick came home yesterday, as you know. He has to hurry to get ready for his trip East to college. The particular reason why I wired you to report here without delay was to ask you if you’d like to go along with him.”
Larry had a firm grip with both hands on the seat of his chair—which was lucky. Otherwise he might have fallen out of it.
“Go with Dick?” he gasped, jarred for once out of his embarrassed, rank-and-file speechlessness. “I’d—why, I’d give anything if I could! But I can’t, Mr. Maxwell; I—I haven’t the money.”
There was a sly twinkle in the stocky gentleman’s left eye when he said:
“I went through Old Sheddon myself on borrowed money, Larry. Supposing some friend of yours—say some stockholder in the Short Line company who has been keeping an eye on you this summer—should offer to advance the money for your expenses, giving you all the time you might need after your graduation in which to pay it back? How about that?”
It was a huge temptation; the fiercest that had ever assailed Lawrence Donovan in all his eighteen years. But he grappled with it—and conquered it.
“I couldn’t—even then,” he said in low tones. “There—there are five of us children at home, and—and the others have got to have their chance. I’ve got to help. Dad can’t keep all of them in school on his watchman’s pay.”