“Well, you certainly have an impetuous way of doing things,” commented Frank. “Did you come on this train?”
“Yes,” replied the boy. “I’ve just been up to the hotel and engaged rooms and tidied up a bit and then hurried right down here.”
Frank and Harry exchanged glances of amusement, the cause of which Lathrop was at a loss to fathom.
“Well,” began Frank, after a brief whispered conversation with his brother, “you are here now and I suppose you’ll have to stay. We can find some work I dare say for you to do and there are a lot of ways you can be useful.”
“I’ll start right in at anything you tell me,” began the boy eagerly. “It’s mighty good of you——”
“Not much you won’t. Not in that fancy rig,” burst out Harry, “if you are coming with us you’d better go up to the village store and get an outfit as much like ours as possible and forget you ever patronized a tailor.”
Lathrop gladly agreed and hurried off to get himself a working outfit. As he hastened down the tracks, Frank turned to Harry with a grin.
“Well, we have gone and done it now,” he said. “But we really have use for another hand, and I think that we can make something out of Lathrop, besides we owe him a debt of gratitude for helping us out at White Plains. If it hadn’t been for him we might have lost the Golden Eagle II and all our work.”
“That’s so,” assented Harry. “I guess he will work out all right. But those fancy duds he had on——”
And the boy burst out laughing at the recollection.