My mind was not on my work for the following three weeks. I went about with a dream in my eyes. I know I whistled much and began to lose all respect for those machines which had driven me, in times past, like a chained slave. I even found myself having much pity for all the other men and boys in the mill. I went among them with hesitation, as if I had a secret which, if told, would make them feel like doing what I was about to do.
I had found out from a ticket agency in the city that my fare to the Middle West would cost approximately seventeen dollars. I knew that in two weeks, with the week’s wage that the mill always kept back and with the seven dollars my Uncle Stanwood had promised to let me have, that I should have my railway fare and incidental expenses, anyway. So there, in the ticket agency, I had the clerk take me, with his pencil, over the route I should later take in the cars. It was a wonderful itinerary. I was to see the mountains of New England, the lakes of the border, and to plunge into a new part of the country! It would take me three days. How I stared at the prospect of so much traveling! I obtained time-tables with maps containing the route over the different railways I should ride on during that journey away from the mill. Three days from the cotton mills! That was a thought to make a fellow dance all day without rest.
One day I lay sprawled out at full length in an alley behind a box, so that the overseer might not see me, when Micky Darrett peeped over my shoulders at the maps I had spread out on which I had traced and retraced my great journey with a pencil.
“What yer’ doin’, Priddy?” said Micky. “Oh,” I announced with studied nonchalance, “just planning out the road I shall take in two weeks. I’m going to college, you know.”
“Oh,” laughed Micky, “quit yer kiddin’ like that! What are you doin’, really?”
“Just what I said, Micky. I mean it.”
“Gee!” gasped the little Irishman; “yer a sporty bluffer, Priddy!”
“But ’tis true, though,” I insisted.
“What yer givin’?” growled Micky. “It’s only swells goes ter college.”
“That’s what you think, Micky, but it’s God’s truth that I go in two weeks and try to make a start.”