After having been home a week, Dick Prescott flushed as he wheeled about to meet this jeering greeting.
In another instant every trace of his wrath had vanished.
"Tom Reade!" hailed Dick in great delight, turning and rushing at his old High School chum. "And good little Harry Hazelton!"
It was, indeed, the young engineer pair, Reade and Hazelton, old-time members of Dick & Co., the great High School crowd of Gridley. Reade and Hazelton, after finishing at the High School, had gone out to Colorado to serve under the engineer in charge of a great piece of railway construction work. The adventures of Tom and Harry, in the wild spots of the West, are fully set forth in the volumes of the Young Engineers Series.
"The last fellow I expected to meet in Gridley!" cried Dick, overflowing with delight as he stuck out both hands at once and grasped theirs.
"Well, we are, aren't we?" demanded Reade.
"You are—-what?"
"The last fellows you've met in Gridley. But where's Greg?"
"If he's out of bed," grinned Prescott, "he's in cit. clothes."
"Carrying a rifle and marching the lock-step—-the route-step, I mean—-has dulled your brain," growled Tom Reade. "Is Greg in Gridley?"