Page:Rover Boys Down East.djvu/78

68 "Indeed yes!"

"Would you have gone on without us?" asked Nellie.

"Not a step!" answered Tom, and spoke the words so quickly and earnestly that everybody in the party laughed.

"I didn't want to miss this train for two reasons," went on Dick. "In the first place, we'd lose our parlor-car seats, and in the second place, we'd have to wait four hours for another train, and that nothing but a slow accommodation."

"Well, I shouldn't mind a slow train—while we have such good company," observed Sam, and for this remark Grace gave him a warm look of appreciation.

"Have you had any further news from home?" asked Dick, of Dora, a little later.

"I got a letter from mamma yesterday. She says Professor Crabtree called again. But she had the maid go to the door, and she refused to see him."

"That's good. Did he say anything to the maid?"

"She says he went away looking very angry and, muttering something about making mamma see him. Mamma watched him from an upper window and she wrote that he hung around the garden about half an hour before he went away."