“Heard anything yet?” whispered Arnold to Toby as Mr. Tucker unlocked the door.
“Not exactly. Last night they sent for dad to go to the drug store. They said he was wanted on the telephone. But either he couldn’t understand, or the wires were bad, or something. He came stamping back as mad as anything. But they told him it was New York calling, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was he.”
“Must have been! I wish we knew whether he was coming today or not. When is the next train, Toby?”
“Gets to Riverport at 3.12. Then it takes about half an hour to drive over. So he couldn’t get here much before 3.45. Seems to me if he was coming he’d have come this morning. I tried to get dad to let me stay home from church, in case he did, but he wouldn’t see it.”
“You don’t suppose he’s been and gone away again?” gasped Arnold. “You don’t suppose he—you don’t suppose he’s taken the launch?”
“Of course not! He wouldn’t do that, and——”
But Arnold had flown down the steps and across the road and was already hiking through the boat yard! He returned presently, perspiring and panting, but vastly relieved, to report the prize still there. The boys, and Phebe too, for that matter—and perhaps the older folks in spite of their unnatural calm—were too excited to do justice to Mrs. Tucker’s very hearty Sunday dinner. Arnold kept glancing at the old mahogany-framed clock on the mantel, while Toby, although he tried not to appear impatient, turned his head toward the window every time footsteps or carriage wheels sounded in the road below.
But when Toby had proclaimed a quarter to four as the earliest possible moment at which Paul Langham Townsend could reach Greenhaven, he had failed to take into account that magic chariot, the automobile, and so when, just as Mrs. Tucker was serving one of her biggest and juiciest rhubarb pies, a big, dust-covered car came to a stop at the gate, no one was prepared for it.
Less than an hour later the Follow Me was out of sight around Spanish Head, the dust-covered car was gone again, and Toby and Arnold and Phebe were staring awedly at a marvelous slip of blue paper, which bore the legend: “Pay to the order of Tobias Tucker and Arnold Deering Three Hundred Dollars!”