“Ruin you?”
“Yes. Business is so bad that I need the money to help matters along. If I lose the cash I’ll have to close up or sell out.”
“Then I think you ought to get after Mr. Garrison without delay—or let me get after him.”
“I do not wish to appear too forward—in case everything turns out right, Frank. Mr. Garrison has done me some good turns in business in the past.”
Father and son had a talk lasting the best part of an hour, and then Frank came up to his room to prepare himself for the journey.
The youth had been to Philadelphia several times during the past two years, so he knew he would not feel as strange as though the city was totally new to him.
The wreck on the railroad had been cleared away in a few hours after it occurred, so there was nothing to hinder the trains from going through on time. Frank left home at ten in the morning and promised to be back by eight o’clock in the evening, or else to send a telegram stating why he was detained. If necessary he was to stop over night at a hotel his father mentioned to him.
The day was a bright, clear one in late June, and had our hero not had so much on his mind he would have enjoyed the trip very much. As it was, however, he could not help but think of what was before him, and of just how he should approach Mr. Jabez Garrison when he met that individual.
“I mustn’t say too much,” he reasoned. “And yet it won’t do to say too little. My opinion of it is, that father is altogether too easy on him. A man who can’t act on the square when he is handling money belonging to others doesn’t deserve nice treatment.”
It was some time before noon when Frank reached the Quaker City, as Philadelphia is often called. The ride had made him hungry, but he determined to call on Jabez Garrison before hunting up a restaurant for lunch.