But though he spoke with a laugh, Bennie didn’t feel very much like laughing, because when his mother looked at him, and tried to smile, he saw the tears behind her eyes, and he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she was afraid for him, but because he was going to be away from her so long. He couldn’t quite understand this, but he loved his mother tremendously, and it made him want to weep, too. In about one minute he was weeping, and so was his mother, with an arm about his shoulder.
“Hello!” he said. “Hello! So you don’t want to go, eh?”
Bennie straightened up, and gulped hard, trying to swallow his sob in a grin.
“Where—where do you get that stuff?” he demanded.
“Well, you don’t seem very _cheerful_ about going.”
“It was ’cause Ma wasn’t cheerful,” said Bennie.
“I’m cheerful, dear,” said his mother, smiling at him. “I wasn’t crying because I was sad, but just because—because—well, you won’t understand, but because you’re so big and grown up now, and can go away by yourself.”
“Well, I don’t see’s that’s anything to cry about, for a fact,” said Bennie.
“Bennie,” his father remarked, “you have never been a mother.”
“Bennie! slang, to your father!” said his mother.
“You have uttered a truthful remark, sir,” grinned Bennie.
The next day Mr. and Mrs. Capen and Spider’s father and mother came down to the depot with the two scouts. Half a dozen of their troop were there, too, and the last thing they heard as they waved from the car window, was the scout yell. The last thing Bennie saw was his mother’s face. She was smiling bravely at him, and keeping the tears back.
In about an hour the boys had to change to a through train, which took them to Chicago. At Chicago they would have to spend the afternoon and early evening, and then take the Northwest Limited on the Union Pacific, which took them right to Portland, Oregon. They had their tickets in their pockets, and their berth checks, and about once in fifteen minutes they felt of themselves, to see if the precious pocketbooks were still there.
Neither Bennie nor Spider had ever been West before, and as long as daylight lasted they sat close to the window. But it was dark all too soon. When the train entered Syracuse, and traveled, apparently, right down the main street, the two scouts looked right into the lighted shop-windows, but out in the country they saw nothing. So they went to bed, each with his precious pocketbook under his pillow.