“If she goes, I want to be sure an’ pay her bills, an’ I’ll see that she ain’t in you fellers’ way.”
“Well, s’pose we try it?” Bob said to Tom after a short pause. “It won’t do any harm; an’ if it’s goin’ to give him a better time, why we oughter let her come.”
“All right; you go after her with him, an’ I’ll snoop down to the Herald office so’s to kind of break it gently to Bill. It might not do to flash the thing too sudden on him, ’cause he never did think much of girls.”
Tom hurried away as he ceased speaking, while Josiah and Bob continued on to Chatham Square, where they plunged Sadie into a state of bewilderment and amazement, by inviting her to spend the entire day at Coney Island.
“Do you think I look fit?” she asked anxiously.
“Course you do,” Josiah replied promptly; “besides, nobody’s goin’ to see you.”
This was sufficient for the child; and, stopping only long enough to deposit her tray of matches with the friendly shopkeeper, she joined the boys, Josiah feeling fully repaid for the money he was about to spend, by the look of gratitude which lighted up the pale face.
CHAPTER IX.
THE EXCURSION.
Tom was overtaken before he had walked very far; and although he and Bob had consented to Josiah’s inviting Sadie to accompany them on the excursion, neither felt that it was exactly the proper thing for them to have “a girl taggin’ on behind,” as some of their acquaintances afterwards described it.
They would have been glad for Sadie to enjoy herself in some other direction than with them; and during the journey to the Herald office, where Master Foss was to be met, the newsdealers kept considerably in advance of their guest and the match-girl, as if not willing to admit that the two were a portion of their party.