Just then a young man, in a handsome blue uniform with shining brass buttons, stepped into the car, and touching his cap to Colonel Dale announced that it was time for the train to start.
Arthur stared at him for a moment and then exclaimed: “Brakeman Joe! Is it Brakeman Joe?”
“Conductor Joe, if you please, sir,” said the young man, looking immensely proud and pleased. “Conductor of this car, and at your orders to take her wherever you may choose to have her go.”
Then, amid the firing of guns, the cheering of the assembled people, and a great chorus of “good-bye” and “come back again soon,” the train moved slowly off, and Arthur had begun his second journey toward Dalecourt. But under what different circumstances from the other was this journey undertaken.
As Arthur sat for a while, perfectly still and thinking it all over, his heart was too full of happiness and gratitude for expression in words. At length he said:
“Grandpapa, I do believe that I am the very happiest boy in the world, and I do wish that all other boys could be as happy as I am.”
“I am afraid that all boys do not deserve to be,” replied his grandfather, smiling; “though, of course, a great many of them do. At any rate, you now have it in your power to add very greatly to the happiness of all the deserving and unhappy boys whom you may meet. I do not know of any better use to which you can put the great wealth that has been so wonderfully given you; and I am willing you should expend just as much money as you see fit in that way. The very best use we can put money to, is to make others happy with it.”
“I think so, too,” exclaimed the boy, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes; “and I would rather spend all the money you can spare in making people happy, than to do anything else in the world with it. Can’t we begin with the people who were good and kind to me, when I was trying to get to you, last year?”
“Of course, we can,” answered Colonel Dale. “I had thought of them, and have planned this journey so as to follow as nearly as possible the same route that you and Uncle Phin took, and find all the people we can who were kind to you.”
They began to carry out this delightful plan of making people happy that very day, by having the “Cynthia” side-tracked at the station nearest to where the Chapmans lived, and driving to their house.