“What do you mean?” asked Oliver.
“I mean tickets to California. I have a ticket for Wednesday’s steamer and I can’t go because my uncle has just died, and I must take charge of part of his business.”
“I don’t know,” said Oliver. “I am just here to buy a ticket for myself,” he continued.
“Is that so? Then let me sell you mine. I paid eighty dollars for it, and I’ll let you have it for sixty; that is, if they won’t take it back.”
“Is that the cheapest passage?”
“It is on the regular lines.”
“Then I’ll take it, if they won’t take it back.”
At the desk it was found that the ticket could be exchanged for a later boat, but could not be canceled. As the young man did not know whether, under the present condition of things, he would go to California or not, he decided to sell the ticket to Oliver; and the transfer was made on the spot.
Oliver was told that the boat would leave at ten o’clock Wednesday morning from the pier on the North River. He made a note of the time and the number of the pier, and then quitted the place.