Myles could have choked the little fellow who coolly sat there telling him to do thus and so. For the second time that day he was strongly tempted to rebel and to maintain his dignity. The idea of that “little absurdity,” as he mentally styled Billings, issuing commands to him! Then for the second time came the words “under orders.” Had he not been ordered to obey Billings? To be sure he had, and with an “All right” he left the building.
As he made his way toward the car-stables he wondered why Billings had not undertaken that ride himself, as he seemed to have nothing else to do except play dominos. The more he thought of it the more he became convinced that it was because Billings was afraid.
CHAPTER V.
THE KIND OF A FELLOW BILLINGS WAS.
“YES, Billings must be afraid,” said Myles, to himself, “and I don’t know but what I would be, too, if I were such a white-faced little chap as he is.” Here Myles threw back his own broad shoulders, held his head a trifle higher than usual, and rejoiced in the stalwart frame that had been such an ornament in the X——“‘Varsity” boat. “I wonder what Mr. Haxall meant,” he continued to himself, “by speaking of him as one of the best reporters on the Phonograph. If he should see him at this moment I rather think he would call him something else. How little a city editor can really know of his men any way!”
While thus thinking Myles was threading the unfamiliar streets of a city as strange to him as though it had been a hundred miles from New York, in search of the car-stables of the B—— Avenue line.
It took him so long to find them that, when he finally did so, the car on which he was ordered to ride had been gone some ten minutes. There was nothing to do but overtake it if possible, and the young reporter started down the track at the same pace he was accustomed to set for his crew when they were out for a “sweater,” as they called their training runs.