“How did it happen?”
“Well, you see, we broke an axle, and we had a van filled with goods. The man who owned them was in no hurry, so we just left them in the wagon, jacked the front part up, put on a new axle, and in a week we started off again. The blacksmith was so busy, he couldn’t make an axle in less than a week.”
“And did you stay on the van all that while and have nothing to eat?” asked Tommy, wondering what would happen if an accident like that should occur now.
“Bless your heart, no! I took the horses to a stable and I went home. When the axle was fixed, the blacksmith sent word to me, and I came and finished the moving. I couldn’t go a week without eating, you know—nobody could.”
“I guess that’s right,” admitted Tommy, and he felt a sort of gnawing pain in his stomach, as if he was even now getting hungry. And it was no wonder, for breakfast had been eaten very early that morning.
As the van swayed to and fro over the rather rough road, Tommy had to hold tightly to the sides of the seat, and with his ball and bat to look after this was not so easily done.
“You’d have done better to have put them in the van,” said the moving man, looking at the baseball things.
“They might have got broken,” said Tommy.
“Yes, they might,” admitted the man.
They rode on for some miles. The sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, and it seemed to be about noon, and still the man did not say that they were near Riverdale. The other van—for there had been two of them—was out of sight now, having started off a little in advance of the one on which our young hero rode.