“I wouldn’t mind. It would be rather fun.”
“Maybe, but you couldn’t handle those big trunks, I’ll bet.”
“I couldn’t?” asked Willard confidently. “I’ll bet I could! Gus Tinker would give me a hand at the station and the porter would help me at the hotel.”
“How about when it was a private house? I’d like to see you wrestling with a trunk like that wardrobe thing of Mrs. Miller’s you were just talking about.”
“I’d manage somehow,” responded Willard doggedly. “Besides, you aren’t obliged to carry trunks up any stairs. I’d just dump ’em at the door.”
“Yes, and have the women scolding you! If we have a horse and wagon we’ll have to hire someone to drive it, Will, and handle the trunks. That’s all there is to it. Meanwhile, we’ve got to think what to do for the present. There’ll be trunks on the 11:34 as like as not.”
They were silent for a while. Tom drew The Ark up in front of his house and poked the switch off with his foot and they sat there in the shade of a big maple and thought hard. It was Tom who finally broke the silence.
“Jerry Lippit’s father has a horse, hasn’t he?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, a sort of a horse,” answered Willard. “But I don’t believe he’d let us have him. He’s about a thousand years old; the horse, I mean.”