“Perhaps you’ll find out sometime if you come on this boat much; but I guess I’d better not tell you.”
The boy was silent for a moment, as if he was trying to understand what Tim meant, and then he said, abruptly:
“Look here, I live down on Minchin’s Island, an’ I come up here to see my aunt. I’m goin’ home on this boat, an’ I want you to show me where I can get a ticket. If you will I’ll show you lots of things I’ve got in this valise.”
“I don’t know where it is myself, ’cause I ain’t been on the boat only two days; but if you’ll wait here I’ll go an’ ask the cook.”
The boy nodded his head, as if to say that he would wait any reasonable length of time, and Tim started off to gain the desired information of old Mose.
In a few moments he returned, and taking his new acquaintance by the hand, would have led him to the clerk’s office at once, had not the young party pulled back in evident alarm.
“We’ve got to take the valise with us, ’cause somebody might steal it, an’ there’s two bundles of torpedoes, a whole bunch of fire-crackers, an’ a heap of little sky-rockets in it.”
Tim understood at once, and, with a serious look on his face, as he thought of the great risk he came near running, took hold of one of the handles of the valise; the boy grasped the other, and the two marched up to the clerk’s office. There, after some little discussion, the ticket was purchased, and the two retired to a more secluded spot for conversation.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked of Tim. “Mine’s Bobby Tucker.”