"I still wish you were going, Dick," said Gordon sadly when the express pulled in under the train shed. "It will be fearfully strange down there with none of the old crowd around. Have you made any plans yet regarding what you are going to do?" "Not fully," answered Richard. "I expect to be leaving town in a day or two, though." "Where are you going?" inquired Gordon in surprise. But Ursula approached them at that moment, and Dick gave a warning signal for silence which Gordon saw and understood. "Good-bye, Gordon," she said prettily, and Gordon suddenly regretted that so many of the boys and girls were there to bid him farewell. He would have much preferred to say his adieus to Ursula with no others present. Strange he never before realized what a beautiful girl she had become, with her blue eyes looking straight out at one from under the black eyebrows and the hair blowing about her delicately tinted cheeks. "A-l-l A-b-o-a-r-d!" rang the voice of the conductor, standing watch in hand ready to give the starting signal to the engineer. The porters were picking up their little steps and getting ready to depart. "Good-bye, Ursula," said the lad simply, wringing her hand with a heavier clasp than he knew, and though he nearly crushed the bones, she never gave the least sign of the pain he was causing her; perhaps she did not really feel it. "Kiss me, Gordon," cried his mother, as she threw her arms around him. "Don’t forget to write immediately on arriving." "Come on, my son, time to jump aboard," cautioned his father in a suspiciously gruff tone, and in a moment more Gordon mounted the steps where from the platform of the moving train he stood waving his hat in farewell. "Give him the school yell, fellows," shouted Tommy Turner at the top of his lungs, and with that rousing cry ringing in his ears Gordon Graham started on life’s real journey. That same evening while Dick’s father was engaged with some business papers, the boy came quietly into the room. "Father, may I interrupt your work for a little while?" he inquired. "Nothing important, Dick, my boy," answered Mr. Comstock, laying aside the document he was reading; "what can I do for you?" "Mother has just told me you are going to New York to-morrow; is that so?" "Yes, I have business there for the firm. Why?" "I was hoping I might go along with you," returned the boy. Dick’s father scrutinized his son’s face for a moment, wondering what was behind the quiet glance and serious manner of the lad. "What is the big idea?" questioned Mr. Comstock. "Want to spend a week or two with Cousin Ella Harris?" "No," replied Dick slowly, "I have something else in mind, but I don’t want to tell you what it is until we get on the train. It’s a matter I have been thinking over for some time and--well, you will know all about it to-morrow, if I may go with you."