“Yes, indeed, it is perfectly safe,” Meadowcroft agreed.
Tommy walked over to the mantel and examined the clock.
“Of course, once in a while, after they get started. I might walk home with ’em,” he announced as he turned. “But if I should start out doing it the first day or even the first week, I should feel like thirty cents, Betty being so much taller, you see. I could tell you right now what the boys would call me if I did—I know a thing or two about boys. They’d call me Baby Brother. Later on they’d know me better. They’d learn that I can pitch a pretty decent ball and that I could lick any one of ’em—I guess I could—and after that a fellow can do as he likes.”
He drew a deep sigh and passed his hand over his ragged fringe of hair.
“I don’t know as there’s anything specially queer in a fellow’s riding in the train with the other high school scholars even if two girls he knows are hoofing it—not even if one of them is blind,” he declared as indignantly as if someone had suggested the contrary.
“Rose can walk just as well for all that. However, Tommy, walking wouldn’t be bad for you; and I should suppose the money you would save might be used very conveniently for your experiments,” observed Meadowcroft.
“O, wouldn’t it!” cried Tommy almost savagely. “But I wouldn’t have that, anyway. I mentioned it to dad and he said if he had a son foolish enough to walk five miles a day when he could just as well ride, why he’d soothe his mortification so far as he could by saving money off him. That’s the sort of chin a fellow has to stand from parents, you know.”
Meadowcroft ignored the issue. Tommy slapped his knee with his cap.
“Hang it!” he cried. “The worst of it is, she has always stood by me, Bet has. Before you came, nobody else ever took any interest in my magic, and she’s the only one that has ever come to see me do tricks more than once. Everybody else expects every single trick to come out just so the very first time, and if they don’t, they haven’t any more interest at all. And it would make it easier for her, too, because I could walk with Rose part of the time and have her go free. O, and we could each take hold one end of a stick—Rose and me—and sling all three dinner pails on it, and——”
Meadowcroft was smiling slightly. Tommy sighed.