CHAPTER XVII.
GETTING ACQUAINTED.
When Richard reached Williams & Mann's he found Frank Massanet already hard at work. He had told the stock-clerk of the robbery in Park Row, and now he related its sequel in the shape of the incident of the morning.
"Well, maybe you did right," said Frank; "although the majority of the street boys are not to be trusted beyond sight. You will find out by this evening if the boy's word is worth anything."
"I think I can trust that boy," replied Richard. "I believe he was truly penitent. My treating him as I did may be the making of him."
Williams & Mann employed in their various departments between fifteen and twenty clerks. They were mostly young fellows, and outside of a tendency to play practical jokes, because he was a new-comer, they treated Richard very well, and the boy was, with one exception, on good terms all round.
This one exception was a young man of twenty.
His name was Earle Norris, and he was head of the shipping department. Richard's duties brought him into daily contact with the shipping-clerk, but though the latter treated him fairly well, there was something in the other's manner that he did not like, and consequently he did not associate as freely with Norris as that young man seemed to desire.
Norris was something of a dandy in his way, and rarely appeared at the store otherwise than faultlessly dressed. Of course when at work he changed his coat, cravat, collar, and so forth, so as not to soil them, but he never left without looking as much "fixed up" as when he had arrived.
"You're a new fellow here," he said to Richard when the latter came down to see if a certain box of books had as yet been sent away.