“Why not?” he asked as he turned around and handed the envelope to Morey. “Here is a note to Lieutenant Purcell with a suggestion. If you are in the service I can the more easily keep track of you. The lieutenant is leaving in a few days for the experiment station. I have suggested that if your mother’s consent arrives in time and you are formally enrolled before he leaves, he should take you with him.”
“Where is the experiment station,” asked Morey, boyishly.
The officer smiled.
“That is a military secret, my son.”
Then Morey smiled.
After expressing his gratitude Morey withdrew. It pleased him to think that he knew where the experiment station was. The presence of Lieutenant Purcell at Linden, only twenty miles from his home was explained. If things worked out all right, Morey figured he would be on his way there in a few days. There, with the possible chance of seeing his mother occasionally, he would study the operation of aeroplanes and would wait for some word as to his business affairs.
The next morning his mother’s letter came. It was a pathetic composition, protesting, appealing and reproaching. And, although she ordered Morey to return home at once she also gave her consent that he might join the Signal Corps. The letter contained also a message from Amos’ father. The substance of this was that a “hiding” awaited the colored boy.
Within an hour Morey had consulted with Lieutenant Purcell. Then he made another call at the real estate office. The manager, Morey thought, showed uncalled for impatience. It had not yet been convenient, it seemed, to look into the Marshall matter. The disappointed lad was glad to make his escape. But he left his new address: “Care Lieut. Fred Purcell, U. S. Signal Corps.”
By noon he and Amos had packed up their belongings, eaten luncheon at one of Amos’ favorite places down near the “Basin,” and the adventurers were off for Fort Meyer. Morey was about to become a soldier. Amos following blindly in Morey’s footsteps, supposed with his own peculiar logic that the white boy’s enlistment included him. In the delusion that he, too, was about to become a soldier and don a cap and blue clothes he was happy.
Lieutenant Purcell had orders to return to Linden, or Green Springs, the real location of the encampment, at noon of the following day. And at his suggestion Morey was not formally enlisted until the next morning. All embarrassment as to Amos was soon relieved. Morey had money enough to send the black boy home by train. The officer, however, offered to attach Amos to himself as a personal servant.