“Then you be ready to come with me to-morrow.  I’ll get through my business by noon, and you and I will just ‘do’ the Falls until dark, and get home on the late train.  How does that strike you?”

But Jimmy was speechless with delight.  For years he had longed to see Niagara, but there was a number of older brothers and sisters, and Jimmy’s turn never seemed to have come until to-day.  But the treat was here at last.  A whole day along with his big dad, prowling about Niagara Falls, feasting his eyes upon its wonders, listening to its everlasting roar as it plunges over the heights!  Jimmy did not sleep very much that night, and, long before train time, he was up, dressed in his best suit, even got himself a fresh pocket-handkerchief, scrambled through breakfast, then sat fidgeting on the front doorstep, while his father took a leisurely meal, glanced calmly at his watch occasionally, then, pushing back his chair, stepped briskly into the hall, glanced at the weather, got his light coat and hat, said good-bye to Mrs. Duffy, and called out “Now, then, Jimmy!” But Jimmy was already at the gate, having kissed his mother good-bye almost an hour before, and presently they were swinging up to the station at a good gait, Mr. Duffy silent, thoughtful, engrossed in his coming business engagement, Jimmy dancing, whistling, strung up with excitement that bade fair to continue throughout the day.

It took three hours to reach Buffalo.  Then poor Jimmy had to sit in a stuffy outer office while his father and “the man” talked on the other side of a glass door.  Jimmy thought they would never stop, but in exactly one hour the door opened, and he heard “the man” say: 

“Now, Mr. Duffy, will you come to my club and we will have luncheon together?”

“Not to-day, thanks, Mr. Brown.  I have my small boy with me, and we’re off for the Falls.  Jimmy’s never seen them yet.”

“Well, well!” answered Mr. Brown.  “That’s nice!  Going to be a boy again yourself, eh, Duffy?  Well, have a good time, and good luck to you both!” And the glass door closed.

His business ended, Jimmy’s father seemed another person.  He chatted and talked and laughed with his son, ordered a splendid luncheon for them both, swung aboard the train, and by two o’clock they were standing on the very edge of the precipice, with the glorious Falls of Niagara thundering into the basin at their feet.  The column of filmy mist, the gorgeous rainbows, the stupendous cataract, leaping and snarling like a million wolves—­it whirled about Jimmy’s brain like a wild dream of No Man’s Land, and he walked beside his father in a daze of delight.  They prowled through the islands, crossed the cobwebby bridges from rock to rock above the Falls, and finally sprawled on a bald ledge of stone that jutted far out into the turbulent river.

“We’ll just rest here a few minutes, James,” said his father, playfully.  “Then we must go below the Falls and explore the ice-bridge.  I see it is yet in perfect condition.  You are fortunate, my boy, to be able to see it.  There are some winters that never bring an ice-bridge.  Then sometimes it thaws in March, so we are lucky to-day.”