“The pin did not cost that.”
“It cost more than that.”
“I will let you have forty dollars on it.”
“I must have at least sixty.”
Finally a compromise was effected, and Oliver received his ticket and fifty dollars.
“That makes one hundred and ten dollars for the two,” he said to himself when on the street once more; “and that, added to what I have saved up from my spending money, gives me a capital of one hundred and eighty-five dollars. By hook or by crook that amount must see me through.”
From the pawnbroker’s Oliver made his way to lower Broadway, where the steamship office was located. It was a busy place, and the boy was compelled to wait for his turn.
While he stood in line he meditated on what he would have to pay for a ticket. If there was any such thing as going second or third class he intended to do so. In his present straitened circumstances every dollar counted.
Suddenly a young man behind him touched him on the elbow and said,—
“Say, do you know if they take back tickets here?”