Page:Dick Hamilton's Fortune.djvu/186

174 might carry to my place, and you know my health is not strong.

"'If I had control of you (as I may have some day), I would not let you do this. But it is not for me to say at this time what you should do. I think you are throwing the money away, and you had much better put the amount you intend spending into the church missionary box and so aid the heathens. They need it.'

"As if those poor kids in the hot tenements of New York didn't need it, too," commented Dick. "Well, Uncle Ezra is certainly a queer man. I suppose he'll keep his house filled with disinfectants while the waifs are at Sunnyside, though it's many miles away."

In about a week Dick had completed arrangements with the committee in New York, the president of which wrote to thank him for aiding in the work they were doing. Dick was told that twenty-five youngsters, ten boys and fifteen girls, none of whom had ever been to the country before, would be sent to Sunnyside in charge of a matron. Dick had forwarded money to buy the tickets, and had planned with Foster to have a big stage meet the train on which the "fresh-air kids," as he called them, would arrive at the nearest station to the country home.

"Well, dad," remarked Dick, the day before the waifs from New York were to arrive, "you've seen the last of me for a week."