u going to tell them the station is for them?" Pee-wee asked me.

"A scout is truthful," I said; "why should I tell them that? I'm just
going to keep still and see what happens. I may decide to name the car
after Eb Brewster. I should worry. We can name it after anybody we want
to name it after, can't we? Jiminetty, I'm glad we're here; we dropped
in at the right place."

"One thing, I'm glad Monday's Columbus Day," Pee-wee said.

"Believe _me_" I told him, "Columbus never discovered anything like
this. I could kind of read in that man's face, the one with the
suspender----"

"He didn't have the suspender on his face," Pee-wee shouted.

"Take a demerit for that, and stay after school," I told him. "I could
kind of read in that man's face, that there is going to be some fun in
Ridgeboro."

"A tempest in a teapot, hey?" Westy said.

"You ought to apologize to the next teapot you meet," I shot back at
him. "Teapots aren't so small."

* * * * *

Pretty soon we got around the bend and then we could see the Skiddyunk
Station. It was a regular station with a platform and everything, all
fancy kind of.

"It makes the poor little Brewster's Centre Station look like a dollar
and a quarter," Connie said.

I said, "I haven't seen a dollar and a quarter for so long that I can't
tell, but the Brewster's Centre Station has traveled; that's what
counts."

Before we got to the station we saw where tracks branched off from the
tracks we were following, so we knew that all the trains that passed
Skiddyunk didn't pass Ridgeboro. I guess they didn't bother with that
place much. At the Skiddyunk Station we got a time table and found that
only one train a day passed Ridgeboro. It didn't go much further than
Ridgeboro. I guess it got sick, hey? It only went as far as Slopson.
Then we asked the express agent about freight trains and he said that a
freight train went along that branch line every three days. He said
there wouldn't be another one going east till Tuesday morning.

Oh, boy, weren't we glad!

"I'll miss French and civil government," Westy said.

Connie said he'd only miss history.

"I'll lose English and geography," I said; "but I won't miss them. Come
on up the main street and let's see if we can find an ice-cream store."

CHAPTER VIII

LABOR TROUBLES

Skiddyunk was a nice town only, one thing, there were industrial
disturbances there. Maybe you know what those are, hey