CHAPTER IV.
HOW JACK PROPOSES TO RAISE THE RENT MONEY.
Jack was quite unprepared for the shock that awaited him when he reached home early that afternoon in high spirits.
“Mother,” he cried, dashing impetuously into the room where Mrs. Hazard was assisting her daughter with her work, “what do you think? I’ve got a dandy place in Wall Street, and I’m to get seven dollars to commence with. Why, what’s the matter?” He stopped suddenly and regarded them with some surprise. “You’ve both been crying. What’s up?”
“We’ve met with a terrible misfortune, John,” replied his mother.
“Why, what has happened?” and the boy sat down with a shade of apprehension in his face.
“The money we had for the rent——” began Mrs. Hazard, slowly.
“Well?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone!” gasped Jack.
“We think it was taken by somebody,” put in Annie, sorrowfully.
“You don’t mean that!”
A few words of explanation made him as wise on the subject as they were themselves, and the boy looked down ruefully at the carpet.
“So you think Maggie McFadden may have taken it?” he said, presently.
“There was nobody else in here to-day,” said Annie.
“As you didn’t actually see her take it, of course we can’t accuse her. She must have found out that you kept money in that drawer and made up her mind to steal it at the first chance. She must have been pretty slick to get away with it right under your nose. Well, it’s pretty tough. I never thought much of the McFaddens. Maggie isn’t my style of a girl, and Denny, her brother, hangs ’round with a crowd that I wouldn’t think of associating with. He blows in most of his wages on horse-racing. Well, mother, how are we going to pay the rent?”
“That’s what worries me. The agent was here and was much put out because I could not pay him. He has allowed me three days to get the money together again. If the rent is not paid by Friday he told me we’d have to move.”
“Gee! This is simply fierce! And to think that everything looked so bright to me a while ago!”
“If I only knew where I could borrow fifteen dollars, we could pay it back in a little while, now that you have secured a position,” said Mrs. Hazard.
“You got the situation through one of the ‘World’ ads, didn’t you, John?” asked his sister.
“No, sis; and you could never guess how I did get it. They don’t often advertise those kind of jobs.”
“Dear me,” said Annie, curiously, “do tell us how you got it, then.”
“Why, John,” interrupted his mother, in a tone of great surprise, “where on earth did you get those clothes? I didn’t notice them till this moment,” and she came over and examined his new suit closely. “Why, it looks like an expensive suit!”
“I guess it is, mother,” laughed Jack. “It was one of the best in the store.”
“Oh, Jack,” cried his sister, eagerly, “do tell us how you came to get it. Where are the clothes you had on this morning when you left home?”
“I expect they will be delivered here some time to-day. The fact of the matter is, I took a hasty bath in the East River.”
“John,” gasped his mother, “what are you talking about?”
Whereupon Jack related his exciting experiences of the morning and how it had led to his getting the position of messenger in Mr. Atherton’s office.
“Why,” exclaimed his sister, excitedly, “you’ll have your name in the papers, and everybody will be calling you a hero.”
“I hope they won’t lose any sleep over the matter; I know I sha’n’t.”
“Well, the little girl would have been drowned only for you.”
“I guess she would,” admitted Jack. “I didn’t expect to get anything for what I did; but all the same, I’m not kicking because I was presented with a good job. We need the money, sis.”
“When do you begin your duties?”
“To-morrow morning at nine o’clock.”
“And when do you get through?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Dear me, you have bankers’ hours, haven’t you?”
“I’m satisfied.”
“I should think you would be,” smiled his sister. “Now, if we hadn’t lost the rent money, I think we would all be perfectly happy.”
“I don’t see but that you’ll have to let me pawn a few of your trinkets, mother. Whatever we’ll lack to make up the full amount I may be able to borrow from Ed Potter. If he’s got it, he’ll let me have it right off the reel.”
“I’ve always had a horror for a pawnshop,” said Mrs. Hazard, with a little shudder. “It brings the realization of one’s circumstances too much to heart.”
“I know, mother; but I don’t see how we can avoid patronizing the place under our present emergency. We must have the rent.”
“True,” answered his mother, with a sigh; “but I won’t agree to let you go there until the last moment.”
That night Jack got three dollars from his friend Ed, and at the same time told him he had got a situation in Wall Street.
Potter was delighted to hear that his chum had secured such a fine job.
“It’s a great sight better than printing,” he remarked.
“I hear the men in our office every day say the trade is going to the dogs on account of the machines.”
“How is that?” asked Jack.
“Well, you see, an operator on a Mergenthaler can stack up forty thousand ems per day and upward, according to the copy and his expertness, while a hand compositor is lucky to average eight thousand. So, you see, the piece hands, as they call ’em, aren’t wanted any more.”
“And that has thrown a lot of printers out of work, has it?”
“Rather.”
“And how do they make a living, then?”
“Some of them don’t. However, there’s a relief fund for Union men that helps ’em out. Many of the old piece hands have turned to be jobbers, and some of them have got to be proofreaders. I’m getting tired of the business myself, so if you hear of something that you think I could tackle, I’m ready to make a change.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open, Ed. I’d like to have you down on Wall Street with me.”
“Hello, Jack Hazard!” exclaimed another boy, a mutual friend of both, named Wally Gray, joining them on the corner. “How does your head feel?”
“Why, how should it feel?” asked Jack, in surprise.
“I thought it looked kind of swelled,” grinned Wally.
“What are you giving me?”
“I s’pose you know all about it,” Wally said to Ed.
“About what?”
“Why, Jack, of course.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hasn’t he told you what he did this morning?”
“Say, Jack,” asked Ed, in a puzzled way, “what is Wally barking about?”
“And you haven’t read to-night’s ‘World’ or ‘Journal’,” continued Wally, grinning.
“No; I came out a little while ago to get the sporting edition, as I’m a crank on baseball.”
“Then run over to the stand and buy one, and I’ll show you something that’ll surprise you. Hold on; you needn’t. Here’s a boy with a bunch of ’em.”
Ed bought a paper.
Wally grabbed it and presently pointed out an article the nature of which Jack knew fully, for he had bought an earlier edition of two afternoon papers for his mother and sister.
It was a pretty correct account of the rescue of little Fanny Bruce, daughter of George Bruce, of Chicago, and granddaughter of Seymour Atherton, a retired New York stock broker, who had fallen from a Fulton ferryboat into the East River, by a lad of eighteen, named Jack Hazard, who lived at No. 80 —— Street.
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Ed, with bulging eyes. “Was that really you?”
Jack grinned.
“You never said a word to me about it, and we’ve been standing here half an hour,” said Potter, in an injured tone.
“I didn’t feel like blowing my horn on the subject, and I knew you’d see the account in the paper after you’d gone over the baseball news.”
“Well, I’m blowed if this isn’t a surprise,” said Ed.
“It knocked me all lopsided,” chipped in Wally.
“I s’pose you’ve been interviewed by the reporters like any other great man?” said Ed, with a chuckle.
“I’ve seen one or two.”
“You ought to make a good thing out of this, Jack. The paper says that the old gent is a money-bag,” said Ed, with a twinkle in his eye. “Didn’t he hand you a liberal check?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it, when I’ve just borrowed three dollars off you?”
“That’s right; but I s’pose he’ll stump up in a day or so.”
“What for?” demanded Jack, sharply.
“Why, for yanking his granddaughter out of the wet, of course,” grinned Ed.
“Nonsense! He won’t do anything of the kind.”
“Then he’ll be a mighty mean——”
“Hold on there!” cried Jack. “He’s done all I would accept. He got me my job, and I’m perfectly satisfied.”
“That’s something, of course; but you’ll have to work for all the money you’ll get out of that. He might have given you a nice present also.”
“He presented me with a new suit of clothes.”
“What’s that? Didn’t you get your own soaked?”
“Well, I’m not kicking, so I guess we’ll talk about something else.”
A few minutes later the three boys parted company.