"Why not send a telegram?" suggested Frank. "It'll take a day for the letter to get there and another day to get an answer. But you might get an answer to a telegram in an hour or two."
Bob seconded this idea and Sammy himself at first was strongly inclined toward it. But after thinking it over, he shook his head reluctantly.
"No good," he decided. "I couldn't say enough in a telegram. They couldn't get the straight of it and they'd telegraph back telling me to write a letter and tell them all about it. So I might as well write it first as last."
Although to wait two days seemed like that many years to the impatient boys, they saw the sense in what Sammy said, and the latter, having obtained a pen and a sheet of paper, was about to begin his letter, when Bob was struck by a happy thought.
"I tell you what, Sammy," he suggested eagerly, "you've got to write to them, but there's no reason why they can't telegraph back to you as soon as they've written the letter and made up their minds. That'll save a whole day of waiting, anyway."
"That's bully!" put in Frank, delightedly.
"So it is," agreed Sammy. "That is, if the answer's what I want it to be. But if the telegram says 'No' I'll wish I'd waited for the letter. I'd have had another day of hoping, anyway."
"There isn't going to be any 'No,'" declared Bob. "It's going to be a great big 'Yes' and don't you forget it!"
"I hope so," said Sammy, fervently.
He grasped his pen firmly, thrust his tongue into his cheek, as was his habit when composing, and set to work with all the earnestness he could muster to persuade his parents to let him go westward with his chums. They sat by sympathetically, putting in a word or an idea here and there to make the case stronger, and as a final clincher, Frank gave Bobby the letter from George to be enclosed with his own.