Ensued then a breathless, panicky minute while Steve searched pocket after pocket for the envelope which contained his transportation to Brimfield, New York. The perspiration began to stand out on his forehead, his eyes grew large and round and his gaze set, Tom fidgetted mightily and persons in nearby seats, sensing the tragedy, grinned in heartless amusement. Then, at last, the precious envelope came to light from the depths of the very first pocket in which he had searched and, with sighs of vast relief, the two boys subsided into the seat. By that time Tannersville was left behind and the great adventure had begun!
There are lots of worse things in life than starting off to school for the first time when you have someone with you to share your pleasant anticipations and direful forebodings. It is an exciting experience, I can tell you! The feeling of being cast on your own resources is at once blissfully uplifting and breathtakingly fearsome. Suppose they lost their way in New York? Suppose they were robbed of their tickets or their pocket money? You were always hearing about folks being robbed on trains, while, as for New York, why, every fellow knew that it was simply a den of iniquity! Or suppose the train was wrecked? It was Tom who supplied most of these direful contingencies and Steve who carelessly—or so it seemed—disposed of them.
"If we lost our way we'd ask a policeman," he said. "And if anyone pinched our money or our tickets we'd just telegraph home to the folks and wait until we heard from them."
"Where'd we wait?" asked Tom with great interest.
"Hotel."
"They wouldn't let us in unless we had money, would they?" Tom objected. "Maybe we could find the United States consul."
"That's only when you're abroad," corrected Steve scathingly. "There aren't any United States consuls in the United States, you silly chump!"
"I should think there ought to be," Tom replied uneasily. "What time do we get to New York?"
"Two thirty-five, if we're on time. We ought to be. This is a peach of a train; one of the best on the road. Bet you she's making a mile a minute right now."
"Bet you she isn't!"
"Bet you she is! I'll ask the conductor."
That gentleman was approaching, and as they yielded their tickets to be punched Steve put the question. The conductor leaned down and took a glance at the flying landscape. "About forty-five miles an hour, I guess. That fast enough for you, boys?"
"Sure," replied Tom. "But he said we were going a mile a minute."
"No, we don't make better than fifty anywhere. You in a hurry, are you?"
"Only for dinner," laughed Steve. "Where do we get dinner, sir?"
"There's a dining-car on now," was the reply. "Or you can get out at Phillipsburg at twelve-twenty-three and get something at the lunch counter. We stop there five minutes."
"Me for the dining-car," declared Steve when the conductor had moved on. "What time is it now, I wonder."
It was only a very few minutes after eight, the discovery of which fact occasioned both surprise and dismay. "Seems as though it ought to be pretty nearly noon, doesn't it?" asked Tom.
"Yes. What time did you have breakfast? I had 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 with hurrying crowds, bustle, noise, confusion and importunate porters. Even though the two boys emerged to the platform in a somewhat dazed condition, they had no intention of wasting perfectly good pocket money having their bags carried for them, and so started out to find the office of the baggage transfer company quite bravely. For a minute they had only to follow the hurrying throng of fellow-passengers, but soon this throng divided and went separate ways and Steve and Tom, resting their arms by depositing their hand luggage on the lower step of an apparently interminable