“Why?”

“For not treating this hyar gemmen wid de respec’ Mr. Perkins thought I ought to when he set hisself down in my parlah cyar, when his ticket done call for the chair cyar.”

The tone in which the porter made his reply was so loud that no one in the office could fail to hear it, and as the officials had already received instructions by wire to pay off the darky in full upon his arrival, when they learned that the shabbily-clad boy standing before the rail was the cause of the discharge, they evinced a very lively interest in him.

“The kid was just up here trying to get a pass he said Mr. Perkins had told him to call for,” returned the man who had dismissed Bob so abruptly.

“If the gemmen says so, den you’d better give it to him, if you-all don’t want to get what Ah got.”

Deeming the time had come for again calling attention to his card, Bob exclaimed: 

“Mr. Perkins told me I was to present this, when I asked for the pass.”

Reaching out his hand for the piece of pasteboard, the man who had refused him before, scanned it hurriedly, and said: 

“You should have given me this in the first place.  You see, we don’t issue many passes now, and we are obliged to be very careful.”  And, calling to one of his clerks, he gave him instructions for making out the pass to Fairfax, after having learned from Bob that that was the destination to which he wished to go.

“You’d better sit down,” said the official, “because it will take a few minutes to get it ready.”

Bob was not thinking of himself, however.  The idea troubled him of the porter’s being discharged on his account, and after a few moments’ deliberation, he called to the man who had given the instructions for the writing of his pass, and asked: 

“Do you think if I should write a note to Mr. Perkins, that he would change his mind about discharging this man?  I don’t like to think he should have got into trouble on my account.  You see, I don’t know much about travelling, and I didn’t know a parlor car from a chair car.”

Surprised at this consideration for a fellow in a boy so young, the official smiled as he replied: 

“I shouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Perkins would think about it, if you asked him.  He seems to have taken a great fancy to you.”

“Then if you will give me a piece of paper, I will write to him.”

And when the writing material was provided, Bob, in his crude, boyish hand, wrote: 

“Mr. Perkins:  You have been very kind to me, but I am sorry you discharged the porter.  I wish you would take him back.  Please, Mr. Perkins.  From your friend, Bob Chester.”

In open-mouthed wonder, the porter listened to the conversation between Bob and the official of the railway, and when the note had been written, and was read aloud by the latter, the darky exclaimed: