“Why did you come here then?” asked Toby coldly.
“It was Pop’s idea,” replied Tubb. “Aunt Sarah died last spring out in Michigan and she left Pop some money. The will said some of it was to go for my schooling. I wanted to go to Huckins’s, in Logansport. Know it? It’s an all-right school and two or three fellows from my town go there. It don’t cost much, either. But Pop was set on this dive. About ten years ago Pop was in partnership with a man named Mullins in the logging business, and this Mullins had a boy who went to school here. Pop thought a lot of the Mullinses, and when he learned about Aunt Sarah’s will he said right off I was to go here. He got the high school principal to coach me all summer. I kept telling him I wouldn’t like it here, kept telling him it wasn’t any place for a storekeeper’s son, but he wouldn’t listen. He said he’d lick the hide off me if I didn’t pass the examinations, and I knew he would. So I passed. He’ll lick me if I go back home, too, so I’ve got to go and get me a job somewhere. Guess I’ll enlist in the Navy. I’ll tell ’em I’m seventeen. They don’t care. I know a fellow got in when he was a couple of months younger than I am.”
Toby viewed Tubb distastefully during a brief silence. Then: “Seems to me,” he said slowly and emphatically, “the Navy is just the place for you, Tubb!”
“Sure,” began the other. Then something in Toby’s tone made him pause and view the other suspiciously. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Just what I said. What you need is discipline, Tubb, and a whole lot of it, and you’ll get it in the Navy. And I wish them joy of you!” Toby arose and crowded past to the aisle.
“Ah, go to thunder!” snarled Tubb. “You’re like all the rest of them, ain’t you? Silk-sox! Who cares what you think? Say, I hope you ain’t caught anything, sitting alongside me like that!”
There was more, but Toby didn’t hear it. Going down the aisle he was uncomfortably conscious of the curious looks bent on him by the occupants of the nearer seats who had been aroused from their sleepy occupation of following the practice by Tubb’s strident voice. He was glad when he had reached the ground and turned the corner of the stand. Passing between the busy tennis courts, he reflected that befriending strangers didn’t work out very satisfactorily for him. After this, he decided, smiling whimsically, fellows might drown or be cut to pieces for all the help he would offer!
Just before supper, when Arnold came back to Number 12, a trifle washed-out looking and not moving very spryly, Toby narrated the outcome of the incident in the train. By this time he was able to tell of the meeting with George W. Tubb with a touch of humor and Arnold listened amusedly, stretched at length on the window-seat.
“You’re right, Toby, the Navy’s just the place for friend Tubbs.”
“Tubb,” corrected Toby. “There’s only one of him, praise be!”