“I’ve never seen the ocean before,” he explained with a deprecating smile as he moved his bag across.
The gentleman smiled and nodded as though to say “I surmised as much, my young friend.” Then he settled down in his new chair and half hid his face behind a magazine. But a few moments later, when Dan happened to glance across, he encountered the gaze of the other fixed upon him speculatively. At once the eyes dropped to the pages of the magazine once more. Dan read the name on the cover, “The Atlantic Monthly,” and wondered whether the magazine was devoted to news of the fascinating ocean upon which he had been eagerly gazing. Then the absurdity of the idea struck him and he turned back to his window smiling.
Not only had Dan never seen an ocean before, but he had never looked on a body of water broader than the Ohio River. This doesn’t necessarily imply that he had spent his entire life in Graystone, for as a matter of fact the family spent an occasional summer away from home, usually in the Cumberland Mountains, and, besides this, Dan had made short trips now and then with his father to Cincinnati, Columbus, Springfield, and once as far South as Memphis. But Lake Erie, which was the nearest approach to an ocean in Dan’s part of the world, was two hundred miles north by rail and it happened that he had never reached it. And not only the ocean interested Dan to-day. The country itself engaged his pleased attention, for, although he had been born in Graystone, yet Connecticut had been the home of his father’s people for many generations and it seemed to him that the smilingly rugged, bay-indented country was holding out a welcome to him.
He had armed himself with a railroad map and had located his father’s old home some eighty miles north. The map even showed Russellville, and the tiny word there seemed a veritable welcome in itself! And so the time went quickly enough for him and almost before he knew it the porter was brushing his clothes and the train had slowed down at Greenburg, which, as he knew, was just across the river from his destination. As he tipped the porter and sank into his chair again he saw that the platform outside was thronged with boys who had left the train from the day-coaches ahead. They must be Yardley Hall boys, he thought; perhaps the train didn’t stop at Wissining and he should get off here! He looked around for someone whom he could ask and his gaze encountered that of the gentleman across the aisle, who, the magazine stowed away in his bag, had donned his light overcoat and was also apparently ready to leave the train. He noticed Dan’s anxious countenance and leaned across.
“Are you for Broadwood?” he asked.
“No, sir; that is, I’m going to Yardley Hall. Should I get off here?”
“No, your station is Wissining, the next stop. This is Greenburg and those boys are going to Broadwood Academy.”
Dan thanked him as the train started again. Suddenly the buildings dropped away from beside the track and in a flash he was looking along the estuary of a little river which wound away between low meadows for a short distance and then opened into the Sound. The sun had gone behind the clouds and a gray evening was succeeding a sunshiny day. Miles away across the quiet water the eastern end of Long Island lay like a purplish smudge against the horizon. He had time to see this, and time to catch a glimpse of a hamlet of scattered houses as the train crossed the little bridge and slowed down beside the station.
“Wissining,” announced the porter as he took up Dan’s bag. “This is your station, sir.”