“Yes, sir. I start Monday at high school.”
“Do you know how to use a broom?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Wright drew his fingers nervously through his black whiskers. “Do, eh? That’s more than anybody else does around here.” Evidently that was intended as a hit at the tall clerk who had drawn near. But the clerk only grinned. “Well——” Mr. Wright turned to his partner. “Take him on if you want to,” he said. “He’s honest, anyway. That’s something. You talk to him.”
He hurried away to the front of the store. Mr. Cummings, with a smile and a quizzical shrug of his shoulders, beckoned Tom to the railed-off office at the rear of the store. There he told Tom to sit down.
“What’s this about a purse?” he inquired.
Tom told of the incident. Mr. Cummings seemed unduly impressed by it. “Now that was funny, wasn’t it? A regular coincidence, eh? Blessed if it don’t look to me as if luck had fixed everything up for you, son. Well, now I’ll tell you what we’re willing to do and you can say whether you want to do it. Your uncle owes this firm sixty-four dollars and a half. We’ll call it an even sixty. Now, we’ll take you on here to work at two and a half a week. Two of that goes to you and fifty cents of it comes to us until we’ve squared ourselves for that sixty dollars. That satisfactory to you?”
Tom considered a moment. Then, “Yes, sir, I think so,” he replied a little doubtfully.
“Well, if I were you, I’d talk to my uncle; tell him our offer and see if he wouldn’t be willing to make up the half-dollar to you. You’re paying his bill, you know.”