"That's an excellent scheme," the girl said. "I don't know that I can give very exact figures, but you want just a rough idea?"
"I'd like it exact, of course," the boy answered, "but since that doesn't seem easy to get, the next best thing is a close estimate."
With this device in mind, very few minutes elapsed before the required information was secured, a rough guess made at the result, and the schedule finally filled out. As Hamilton rose to go, the girl said laughingly: "I think I should at least receive 'honorable mention' in the dispatches as a census-taker, the same as soldiers do in war."
"Very well," said Hamilton, smiling in return, "I'll bear it in mind," and thanking her heartily, he went on his way, greatly relieved that the difficulty was over.
In a piece of extra territory that Mr. Burns had assigned to the boy, there were several factories in which there had been some difficulty in securing properly filled schedules, partly because much of the work was done on the night shift. Because of this, Hamilton had got in touch with some of these factories—they were principally glass works—on the night side first. He frequently found it necessary to work thus in the evenings, especially after this added work, which was given him because the district proved too large for the agent having it in charge.
Little by little he worked these down until but one remained, owned by Germans, where the boy experienced great difficulty in securing any sort of attention. The night superintendent, however, was ready to help, and Hamilton went to him constantly in the endeavor to have the schedule for that factory filled. This was the easier, as the night superintendent in question had recently been promoted to that position from head bookkeeper.
One night, waiting for the superintendent to work out these figures, he sauntered through the works. A phrase from Edwin Markham's "The Hoe-Man in the Making" kept ringing through his head. It ran as follows—"It is in the glass-factory perhaps, that the child is pushed most hopelessly under the blind hammer of greed," and the boy wondered whether this especial works was one of those which the poet-author had visited. Owing to the number of times Hamilton had been forced to go to this factory, two or three of the men had come to know him by sight, and they nodded now as he passed through. Noticing a boy that looked even younger than himself,—for unconsciously his eye was seeking that of which he was thinking,—he turned to one of the men who had nodded to him, and said casually, and with an air of surprise:
"Why, that chap there doesn't look any older than me!"
"I don't suppose he is so very old," the man replied, "sixteen, maybe."
"Seems a shame to have to start in so young," Hamilton went on, with an assumed air of carelessness, "and I suppose he's been here some years."