“One what?” Mrs. Wells was startled.
“Trunks!” cried Walter.
“Goodness! I thought it was a fire!”
“’Ere’s ’nother!” cried Walter again. “’Ere they come. All of ’em!”
“Good work!” Richard slapped him on the back. “You’re the boy! Now let’s rustle up a stevedore and a customs gentleman and put them through.”
Mrs. Wells had given Geraldine the family purse, and she in turn had passed it over to Richard. Like a veteran tourist-guide, he paid small duties, fee’d the draymen, arranged for expressage, called taxis, bought train tickets and established his party in the rear seats of an observation car. Not until they were speeding out of the Lackawanna Station did he realize that he had not telephoned Galloway. “Well,” he thought, “he has my letter mailed on shipboard. He’ll find us, all right.”
Then a ridiculous thought seized him. He took a seat beside Geraldine and pulled from his pocket a thin wallet, the one he had shown her on that first day at Naples; from it he produced a solitary five-dollar bill.
“Look!” he waved it.
She did not comprehend until he had brought the family purse from another pocket and dangled the two before her.
“I’ve bought my ticket out of your money!” he cried. “Now wasn’t that clever of me! I still have my five dollars to windward and good free meals ahead! Oh, it’s a wonderful thing to have faith. The Lord will provide.”