“Fine,” said Joe. “That’ll suit me to a dot. Suppose we say two o’clock in the afternoon day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” declared Dick; and with a final handclasp they separated, and Joe hurried home to his belated dinner.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Momsey,” he said to his mother as he kissed her in the hall and hung his hat and coat on the rack, “but it seems to me that I’ve met the whole population of Riverside this morning. I didn’t know the old town had so many people in it.”
“I don’t wonder they wanted to talk to you, after yesterday,” said Mrs. Matson, her bosom swelling with maternal pride. “I thought it would be that way, so I got dinner ready a little later than usual. But come right in now while things are hot.”
“That’s an invitation I never refuse,” said Joe gaily, as with his arm around his mother’s waist he went into the dining room. “Hello, what’s this?” as his eye fell on a yellow envelope on the mantelpiece.
“It’s a telegram that came for you about an hour ago.”
“From Reggie again, probably,” said Joe, as he tore it open. “Something he forgot to put into the first one. If I keep on getting telegrams, it may pay the company to put in a branch office at the house here.”
He ran over the message and his face flushed. Then he read it again as though he could not believe his eyes. Then with a whoop he threw it from him, and catching his mother about the waist whirled her around the room in a wild war dance.
She extricated herself at last, breathless and scandalized.
“Joseph Matson!” she exclaimed, “what on earth is the matter with you? Have you gone crazy?”