[CHAPTER II]
AND FINDS IT
The clock in a nearby steeple showed Tom that there still remained nearly ten minutes of waiting, and so he joined the northward-bound throng and idled along the street, pausing now and then to examine the contents of a store window. A jeweller’s display held him for several minutes. He wondered whether he would ever be rich enough to possess one of the handsome gold watches so temptingly displayed on black velvet.
“They ain’t—aren’t—any thicker’n a buckwheat cake,” marvelled Tom. “Don’t seem as if there was room inside them for the wheels and things!” Just then he caught sight of himself in a mirror, took off his straw hat, and smoothed down a rebellious lock of red-brown hair. Then he replaced his hat, studied the result in the mirror, and nodded approvingly. A lady at the other side of the window smiled at the pantomime, and then, catching Tom’s glance in the mirror, smiled at Tom. Tom flushed and hurried away.
“Guess she thought I was a fool,” he muttered. “Standing there and primping like a girl!”
The lady followed his flight with kindly amusement, realising sympathetically his embarrassment. And as she went on she wondered about him a little. The reddish-brown hair and the clear, honest blue eyes had been attractive, and, although the tanned and much-freckled face could not have been called handsome, yet there was something about it, perhaps the expression of boyish confidence and candour, that lingered in her memory. Neatly, if inexpensively dressed, his attire had told her that he was not an Amesville boy, while a lack of awkwardness, a general air of self-dependence, seemed to preclude the idea of his being from the country. The problem lasted her only for a short distance and then Tom and the ingenuous incident at the window passed from her mind. But she and Tom were destined to meet again, although neither suspected it.
It was exactly half-past one when Tom entered the hardware store once more. On the occasion of his first visit the store had been empty of customers, but now at least half a dozen persons were there, and Mr. Cummings was busy. Tom found a position out of the way and waited. Besides Mr. Cummings, there were two others behind the counters—a tall youth who, as he passed with a customer in tow, looked curiously at the boy, and a small man with dark whiskers who, at his present distance, had a strong likeness to the gentleman who had left his purse in the lunch room. It was several minutes before Mr. Cummings was at leisure, but finally, dropping the change into the glove of a lady who had purchased a tack hammer and three papers of upholstery tacks, he beckoned Tom to the counter.
“Well,” he said, “I spoke to Mr. Wright about you, son, but he didn’t think we’d better hire anyone just yet. Maybe a month or so later, if you still want a job, we can take you on. Sorry I can’t do anything now.”