Читать книгу The Brother of a Hero онлайн

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At the left of the wharf was a ferry slip, with a little brown shed beside it bearing the legend, Greenridge and Milon Ferry Company. A handful of people waited there under the shelter and watched the arrival of the river steamer. The paddles thrashed, the steamer shivered and bumped, the gangplank thudded to the wharf, and the disembarking passengers moved forward. Rodney followed, gave up his ticket, and found himself on land. He yielded his bag and trunk check to a hackman, asked directions, and with a farewell glance at the Henry Hudson gained the shadiest side of the ascending street.

It was still only a little after two o’clock and he had all the afternoon before him. Somewhere at the top of the hill was Maple Hill Academy, for which he was bound. But, as he would undoubtedly see quite enough of that institution during the next nine months, he was in no hurry to reach it. Rodney’s father had accompanied the boy to New York and had fully intended coming to Greenridge-on-Hudson with him, but, just as they had sat down to dinner in the hotel the evening before, an imperative telegram had reached him, and this morning Rodney had boarded a Hudson River steamboat and Mr. Merrill a Chicago train. Naturally Rodney had been disappointed, but he was quite used to his father’s erratic flights from home—it was the penalty of having a father who was an important factor in a big railway system—and he had made the best of it. There had been so much to see from the moment the steamer had left its dock in the North River until it had bumped against the big piles at Greenridge that Rodney had forgotten to be lonesome. Besides, to a boy of fifteen, even though he has been brought up to be self-reliant and is fairly accustomed to looking out for himself, there is something inspiriting in journeying alone, in being thrown on his own resources. He experienced a fine feeling of independence as he loitered up the street, and perhaps was guilty of a suggestion of swagger, for which I think he may be excused.