Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
Till the field ring again and again
With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
Follow up! Follow up!
XXVI
THE BIOLOGIST AND THE PURITAN
THE solemnity of the parting song had driven Bardek off alone. Allen and Kate walked along ahead, but at the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, a dark, forbidding place, Allen insisted upon stopping to wait for Gorgas and Leopold, who were straggling far in the rear. Fumbling accidentally in his pockets, Blynn produced his morning mail, two letters, still unopened. They moved up to the lights of the station to see what it would disclose. One was from Gorgas—she had a habit of jotting notes to persons she met every day. He glanced at it hurriedly, but in the bad light did not catch the full meaning. The other letter set him dancing.
“Can you spare me for the remainder of the month, Madam Manager, and part of September?” he asked. His eyes showed good news.
“Is it money?” the practical manager asked first.
“Bushels!” he cried. “Diccon has booked a series of lectures in a string of cities,” he read, “Rochester, Ithaca, Albany, Providence and Boston. I cover the route three times, fifteen lectures in five weeks, at—what do you think? One hundred dollars each and expenses!”