“Hum! Ever invent anything?”
“No, not yet,” answered Joe with a smile.
“That’s right—never do it. It’s a poor business. Play ball?”
“I did in Bentville where we lived, but I haven’t had a chance here yet.”
“Hum! Yes, Bentville. That’s where I met your father. Here’s the answer. There you are. Now don’t lose it,” and quickly handing the communication to Joe, Mr. Holdney turned and resumed his talk with the hardware merchant.
Joe was a little dazed by the quickness of it all, and there were many questions running through his mind. Somehow the manner of Mr. Holdney—the message he had started to ask Joe to deliver by word of mouth, his apparent refusal of something Mr. Matson had evidently asked him to do—all made Joe vaguely uneasy. He connected it with his father’s nervousness the night before and with his mother’s anxiety.
“But there’s no use worrying until I have to,” concluded Joe with a boy’s philosophy as he left the hardware store, and truth to tell, he was thinking more of his chances of going to boarding school in the fall perhaps, and whether or not he would get an opportunity to play ball, than he was of any possible trouble.
On leaving the hardware store Joe was surprised to find it growing dusk. Gathering clouds added to the gloom and he made up his mind that the last part of his homeward journey would be made in darkness.
“Guess I’ll see if I have any oil in the lamp,” he remarked as he was about to mount his wheel. “If I haven’t I can get some here.” But he found, on shaking the lantern, that it was filled enough to carry him to Riverside, and he was soon pedaling along that country road.
The clouds continued to gather, and as the journey back was partly up hill, and as the bent pedal did not permit of fast riding, Joe soon found it necessary to alight and set the lamp aglow.