“Do you know what happened to the train that car was on once?” Pee-wee said.
“Come in on time?” Harry began laughing; because that’s one thing the trains out our way never do.
“Worse than that,” Pee-wee said; “here read this letter that we found way in under the stuffing of the seat.”
The kid started digging down in his pocket and pretty soon that table looked like a church rummage sale.
“Did you ever?” Grace Bronson said; “what in the world is this?”
“Take your pick,” I told her; “souvenirs of the boy scouts.”
All the while Harry Donnelle was reading the letter and I could see he was interested, because he didn’t bother to jolly Pee-wee about all the rest of that junk. When he was finished he didn’t say a single word, only handed it to Grace and watched her while she read it, all the while drumming with his fingers on the table.
“And you found it?” she said. “Oh, I think it’s too romantic for anything! Did you ever read such a letter! It carries you back to the old days. Just think how it was there all these years. Who do you suppose Ann was? And it all happened before I was born. Isn’t that wonderful!”
Harry said, “Oh, quite a few things happened before you were born.”
Then he took the letter and read it through again, and then folded it in the old creases. Then he just said, “Humph!” After that he opened it very carefully and laid it on the table and read it again. Then he said, sort of as if he were thinking, “Bully old top, that fellow was. I’d like to have known him. He seems to have been made out of pretty good stuff.”