“In just about a week,” answered Joe. “I think I’ll start next Thursday afternoon.”
“Are you going straight to New York and go south with the rest of the team?” Tom inquired.
“I don’t think so,” was the reply. “McRae left it to me to pick out my route in any way that would be most convenient to me as long as I joined the party somewhere on the way. I think I’ll go by way of Goldsboro, North Carolina. The boys go through there, and that will be as good a place as any to meet them.”
Joe spoke with an elaborate affectation of carelessness, but he could not prevent that troublesome blood of his from flooding his face.
“Gee, Joe, but you’re red!” cried honest Tom. “You haven’t been exercising too much this afternoon, have you?”
“Not a bit of it,” returned Joe, with unnecessary emphasis. “I never felt better in my life.”
But if he could fool Tom, he could not “get away with it” with Clara, and he was subjected to an unmerciful teasing when that young lady learned of the route he had chosen.
“Goldsboro, North Carolina,” she mused. “Where have I heard that name before? Oh, how stupid of me! Of course, that is where Reggie lives. I suppose you’re awfully anxious to see him.”
But Joe was so engrossed in his packing just then that he pretended not to hear, and all her efforts to get a reply out of him, although carried out with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, ended in comparative failure.
The dreaded afternoon came at last, dreaded by all the members of the little family who were welded so closely together in heart and life. The others all went down to the train to see Joe off, and it was only the presence of a large part of the population of Riverside, who had come with a similar purpose, that kept the mother and sister from breaking down entirely at the thought of the long parting from the son and brother that they idolized. As it was, they bore up bravely, and waved their handkerchiefs with smiles that were tremulous as the train moved out of the station to the accompaniment of a storm of cheers from the crowd that packed the platform. Joe waved back, but he had eyes for only three figures in all that throng. The train rounded a curve and he was off, leaving the old home town behind him for many months to come.