“All aboard—uptown train!” now bawled a guard, and all else was forgotten in the scurry to get on.
Dot felt worried about her twin, but being in such disgrace already, she did not add to her troubles by asking for Don.
Soon the guard announced “23rd Street” and the children trooped off. There sat the members of the Blue Birds and Bobolinks in a row on a bench, and a negro man standing beside them was apparently enjoying himself, as he listened to an orator standing at one end of the long bench. It was Don who held forth with such a flow of rhetoric.
“Say you, Don Starr! How came you here?” shouted half a dozen voices, as as many individuals ran over and caught hold of the boy.
At the sudden shaking, Don dropped something. Dot saw it fall and gave it a vicious kick. It was a huge ball of gum. Don saw it and knew what had caused it to roll away. He glared at Dot, and then turned to the boys.
“Mighty good thing I got my wits about me! You boys aren’t worth a cent to look after a bunch of youngsters! I know how to travel, all right! I’ve been to Jersey City, Hoboken, Erie, and Christopher Street, Ninth Street, Fourteenth Street, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, Twenty-eighth and Thirty-third Streets, all in an hour—and here I am as fresh as ever!”
“Fresh—of course you are! And I’m going to have Uncle Ben take a lot of it out of you just as soon as we get to his office!” threatened Mete.
“No you won’t either! I telephoned him from the 33rd Street station to ask him what to do and he said: ‘Go and wait at 23rd Street station as planned, and bring them all over here as soon as possible. You are almost an hour late for the appointment!’ so I am to take charge now, and see that we all get over to the office as quickly as you can travel!”
The children laughed at the order from Don, and then started up the steps to the street, but did not see Don stoop to catch up the ball of gum. He planned to wash it well at a drinking place he knew of in his uncle’s office.
Without further mishap, they all reached the 18th floor where Uncle Ben’s office was located, and Don slipped away. The gum was soon washed, and he chewed as noisily as ever as he ran after the last one to enter the door leading from the main hall to the offices.