st like some new kind of frosting. The crowd went crazy. I
thought one of those trainmen would have a fit, he laughed so hard.
I said, "Never mind, Kid, you died for a good cause; only don't open
your mouth, or you'll swallow about a quart of sawdust."
Oh, boy, it makes me laugh whenever I think of it. Westy had a headache
from laughing. His mother said it was from eating tenderflops, but _I_
was the one that heard him laugh.
Anyway, that was the end of our adventures.
We cleaned our young hero up and brushed him off, but every time he
spoke that night, he said he tasted sawdust.
The train people fixed our coupling and in about an hour we were rolling
merrily out through the gates on the end of that long freight train. I
guess it couldn't have been Number Twenty-three, because nothing
happened. Anyway, I bet the profiteers were glad to get rid of us.
Pee-wee said we "dealt them a mortal blow." Westy said we "felled them
to the ground with a frying pan."
Anyway, we had twenty-seven dollars, counting what we made out of the
movie show, and not counting the fifty that Mr. Temple had sent us. That
wasn't so bad when you remember that we had only forty-two cents when we
started.
Sometime that night we were left in the freight yards at Jersey City,
but we were all too sleepy to notice anything. Anyway, what's the use of
being awake when you're in Jersey City. Early in the morning, a Northern
local picked us up, and pretty soon we were rattling along the shore of
our own river. You can bet it looked good to us. At about half-past
seven, we were left on the sidetrack near the Bridgeboro Station.
"All the commuters will be coming down for the seven fifty-two," Wig
said "Let's get up on the roof and give them a Scout Sing."
It looked good, after that crazy trip, to see all the things that we
knew so well. There was Bennett's candy store, and there was the Royal
Movie Theatre just around the corner. Pretty soon people began
straggling along for the seven fifty-two, and a lot of them stood about,
gaping at our car with its sign.
Buffalo 398 Mls.--BREWSTER'S CENTER--N. Y. 30 Mls.
So we all got up on the roof and sat there in a row, singing. People
down below waved to us and Connie's father shouted hello to us, but we
got to singing so loud, we couldn't hear all the things that people
said. Everybody down there knew us, and we knew they knew we were crazy,
so we didn't care.
"_All together!_" Wig said.
"_
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