"All the rest of the family are sound and good for something, and so everybody calls him 'Chaff,'" said Magnus.
Mr. Wayne laughed heartily. "All sorts there, too," he said. "But here is our ten-minute station. Come along. I invite you to be my guest, and when you are invited out to supper, you must go when you don't want to go, and eat when you are not hungry."
And Magnus laughed and followed. But to hurry into that brilliantly lighted room after a cheerful companion, and to eat all sorts of queer railway providings at railway speed, was a very different thing from munching his dry sandwich alone in the dusky car, and all the time seeing nothing but the dear fingers that put it up. Appetite came back, and spirits, with somewhat of the joyous sense of enterprise and novelty; confidence and liking for his new friend sprang up into life-size proportions, and it did not take long to tell over the whole little home story. It was such a comfort to speak to somebody.
And Mr. Wayne listened with deepest interest. He had meant to take a sleeper as soon as they left the Junction, but changed his purpose, and sat by the boy through all the hours of the night. Ready for words when Magnus roused up to speak them; and when the young eyes closed, and the young head sought intervals of rest against the hard, swaying back of the seat, then studying the boy with a face from which the laugh had vanished, and a grave, almost solemn, look came up to take its place.
"Good blood," so he muttered to himself, as he noted the clear skin and pure colour, "and well brought up"--for unmistakable lines of truth and intelligence marked the face. "Warm-hearted--almost--as a woman, and wilful enough for two! What will he do at West Point? and what will West Point do to him?"
The grave eyes were shielded, and from the kindly heart went up that longing petition of the Lord himself:
"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."
So the night wore on, with alternate snatches of talk and sleep, until the early dawn of the June day came swiftly up over the outside world.
"To-night I shall be at West Point," said Magnus, as the two new-made friends went back to their car after breakfast.