Colbert, however, did not leave me in any doubt as to what she
wanted me to do. She rushed up to me, and seized me by both hands.

"Now you will take the greatest and the best care of my boy, wont you?
You'll cherish him as the apple of your eye? You'll keep him out of
every kind of danger? Now _do_ take good care of him,--especially in
storms."

[Illustration: "SHE SEIZED ME BY BOTH HANDS."]

I tried to assure Rectus's mother--she was a wide, good-humored
lady--that I would do as much of all this as I could, and what I said
seemed to satisfy her, for she wiped her eyes in a very comfortable sort
of a way.

Mr. Colbert got his wife ashore as soon as he could, and Rectus and I
stood on the upper deck and watched them get into the carriage and drive
away. Rectus did not look as happy as I thought a fellow ought to look,
when starting out on such a jolly trip as we expected this to be.

I proposed that we should go and look at our state-room, which was
number twenty-two, and so we went below. The state-room hadn't much
state about it. It was very small, with two shelves for us to sleep on.
I let Rectus choose his shelf, and he took the lower one. This suited me
very well, for I'd much rather climb over a boy than have one climb over
me.

There wasn't anything else in the room to divide, and we were just about
to come out and call the thing settled, when I heard a shout at the
door. I turned around, and there stood Harry Alden, and Scott, and Tom
Myers and his brother George!

I tell you, I was glad to see them. In spite of all my reasoning that it
made no difference about anybody coming to see me off, it did make a
good deal of difference. It was a lonely sort of business starting off
in that way--especially after seeing Rectus's father and mother come
down to the boat with him.

"We didn't think of this until this morning," cried Scott. "And then we
voted it was too mean to let you go off without anybody to see you
safely on board----"

"Oh, yes!" said I.

"And so our class appointed a committee," Scott went on, "to come down
and attend to you, and we're the committee. It ought to have been
fellows that had gone through the school, but there were none of them
there."

"Irish!" said Harry.

"So we came," said Scott. "We raised all the spare cash there was in the
class, and there was only enough to send four of us. We drew lots. If it
hadn't been you, I don't believe the professor would have let us off.
Any