Left End Edwards | Page 6

mine at half-past six."
"Me too. Let's go through the train and see if we can find some apples
or popcorn or something."
The trainboy was discovered in a corner of the smoking-car and they
purchased apples, chocolate caramels and salted peanuts, as well as two
humorous weeklies, and found a seat in the car and settled down to
business. They were both frightfully hungry, since excitement had
prevented full justice to breakfasts. It was horribly smoky in that car,
but Steve declared that he liked it, and Tom, although his eyes were
soon smarting painfully, pretended that he did too.
"I suppose we'll have to smoke at school," said Tom without
enthusiasm.
Steve considered the question a moment. "I don't believe we will unless

we want to," he replied at last. "We can say it's because we're in
training, you know. They don't allow you to smoke when you're trying
for the football team or anything like that."
Tom sighed his relief. "It makes me horribly squirmy," he said. "I
thought, though, that if all the fellows did it, you know, I'd better, too.
In all the stories about boarding schools I've ever read, the fellows
smoke on the sly and get found out. Don't see much fun in that, though,
do you?"
"No." Steve devoured the last of his apple and started on the peanuts. "I
don't believe those stories very well, anyway. There's always a
goody-goody hero that gets suspected of something he didn't do and
knows who really did it all the time and won't tell. And then he saves
another fellow from drowning or something and it turns out that it was
that fellow who did it, you know, and he goes and fesses up to the
principal and the principal asks the hero's pardon in class and the
captain of the football team comes to him and begs him to play
quarter-back or something, which he does, and the school wins its big
game because the hero gets the ball and runs the length of the field with
it and scores a touchdown. I guess boarding school isn't really very
much like that, Tom. I guess there's a heap more hard work to it than
those fellows who write the stories tell you about. Anyway, we'll soon
find out."
"Still, I guess some of those things do happen sometimes," said Tom a
trifle wistfully, unwilling to relinquish the story-book romance.
"Fellows do get wrongly accused of--of things, and they do rescue
other fellows from drowning--sometimes, and fellows do win football
games. I'd like to do that and be a hero!"
"Sure! So would I. Bet you, though, there won't be any of that kind of
stuff at Brimfield. I dare say we'll wish ourselves out of it long before
Christmas! If anyone wrongly accuses me of anything you can bet I'll
make a kick. You won't see me getting punished for what some other
fellow's done. That's all right in stories, but not for yours truly! Not a
bit of it, Tom!"

CHAPTER III
STOP THIEF!
They descended on the dining-car at twelve o'clock promptly, being
unable to remain away any longer, and gave an excellent imitation of a
visitation of locusts performing their well-known devastating act. If any
two travellers by land or sea ever received their money's worth in food
it was Steve and Tom. They took the menu card and briskly demanded
everything in order, and when, having finished their dessert, they made
the discovery that a criminally careless waiter had deprived them of
pineapple sherbert, they immediately and indignantly saw to it that the
omission was corrected. Afterwards, groaning with happiness and
repletion, they dragged themselves back to their own car and subsided
on the seat in beatific silence.
An hour later they came out of their stupor to stare eagerly, excitedly
out at the indications of the approaching metropolis. Meadows strung
with enormous and glaring signboards gave place to towns and
presently there came a pause at a station where other trains whisked in
and out with amazing frequency. Then on again, and they were
suddenly dipping into a tunnel, conscious of an unpleasant pressure
against their eardrums. Tom's expression of bewildered alarm moved a
kind-hearted neighbour across the car aisle to lean over and explain
smilingly that the train was now running under the river, a piece of
information but little calculated to remove Tom's fears had he given the
slightest credence to it, which he didn't.
"I guess," he muttered resentfully close to Steve's ear, "he thinks we're
a couple of 'greenies' for fair! Going under a river!"
And then, almost before Tom's indignation had given way again to
alarm, the tunnel was left behind and they were in New York at last, a
dimly-lighted, subterranean New York filled