of the car window, for his benefit—swaying and flickering as it unrolled on a sun-dazzled film—and he and the other passengers might have been sitting in the darkness of orchestra chairs, for all he saw of them.
The man was Walter Babbing. The boy was Barney Cook. They were supposed to be on their way to Philadelphia, to work on a case. And Babbing was waiting to see how long it would take young Barney to remember that the road to Philadelphia did not lead up the west bank of the Hudson River.
Hence his appraising glances. Hence, also, the questions that he began to ask, from behind his paper, every now and then, as he turned from one news item to the next: “Were you ever in Philadelphia?” “How far have you been from New York?” “Where is Philadelphia?” “Well, in what direction do you think it is, from New York?” And to these queries, Barney had to answer that he had never been in Philadelphia, that he had never been farther from New York than
