“Say, let me go along, won’t yer, Bob?”
Bob turned, and, seeing Marty’s eager face, forgot his worry for the moment, and asked kindly: “Can you buy your ticket?”
“No.” Marty clenched his hands and looked desperately from one to another of the group. The train was thundering down the track beside the platform. “But you fellows might buy me one. And I’d pay yer back, honest!”
“Say, Bob, let’s take him,” said Hamilton. “Goodness knows, if we ever needed a mascot, we need one to-day! Here, I’ll chip in a quarter.”
“So’ll I,” said Sleeper. “Marty ought to go along; that’s a fact.”
“Here’s another.” “You pay for me, Dick, and I’ll settle with you when we get back.” “I’ll give a quarter, too.”
“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.
“All right, Marty; jump on,” cried Bob. “We’ll find the money—though I don’t know where your dinner’s coming from!”
Marty was up the car-steps before Bob had finished speaking, and was hauling the long bag from Wolcott with eager hands. Then they trooped into the smoking-car, since the day-coaches were already full, and Marty sat down on the stiff leather seat and stood the bag beside him. The train pulled out of the little station, and Marty’s gloom gave place to radiant joy.
The journey to Vulcan occupied three-quarters of an hour, during which time Bob and the other eight groaned over the absence of Magee and Curtis and Goodman, predicted defeat in one breath and hoped for victory in the next, and rearranged the batting list in eleven different ways before they were at last satisfied. Marty meanwhile, with his scuffed shoes resting on the opposite seat, one brown hand laid importantly upon the leather bag and his face wreathed in smiles, kept his blue eyes fixedly upon the summer landscape that slid by the open window. It was his first railway trip of any length, and it was very wonderful and exciting. Even the knowledge that defeat was the probable fate ahead of the expedition failed to more than tinge his pleasure with regret.