Had Jack been less busy with his thoughts he might, perchance, have taken notice of a passenger who sat across the car and a little to the rear. He was a man of about forty years, with small, clearly cut features, brown eyes, and carefully trimmed mustache and beard. His attire was notably neat. In his mouth was a cigar, in his hands a morning paper, and at his feet a handsome suit-case. Ever since Jack’s advent he had been watching him over the top of his paper with a puzzled frown. The boy’s face, seen against the white light of the car window, expressed every passing emotion, and the passenger across the aisle, who was a good reader of expressions, felt a stirring of sympathy at the pervading look of despondency he saw.
Presently the conductor entered, and Jack remembered that he must pay his fare. He felt for the little roll of money that was to take him home, first in his vest pocket, then in his trousers. Then, while an expression of bewilderment came over his face, he searched hurriedly in every pocket he possessed. The conductor came and waited patiently. Jack seized his valise and began to unstrap it. Then he paused and glanced uneasily at the conductor.
“I can’t find my money,” he said. “If you’ll just give me a minute or two—” The other nodded and passed on down the car. Jack opened the valise and feverishly searched it. But when it was thoroughly upset he was forced to acknowledge with a sinking heart that the money was not there. He had taken it out of the trunk; he remembered doing that perfectly; he had meant to put it into his vest pocket. But it was not there.
He stared blankly out of the window, still searching his clothes hopelessly. Well, he was not going home after all. Fate had intervened. Disappointed and chagrined, he counted the few coins in his trouser’s pocket and found that while they would pay his way to the next station they would not serve to take him back to Centerport. He blinked his eyes to keep back the tears. Tears, he reflected miserably, were always trying to crawl out nowadays. And then—
[“What’s wrong, Weatherby?”] asked a voice over his shoulder, and Jack looked up with startled eyes into the face of Professor White.
For a moment his surprise kept him silent. And in that moment he saw in the professor’s face a kindliness that he had never before noticed. The professor’s brown eyes were plainly sympathetic and the professor’s lips held a little reassuring smile at their corners. And Jack, wondering more, found his tongue.
“Well, that is hard luck,” said the professor when he had heard the story. “And you’re going home, you say? How much money will it take?”