"Well," the boy answered, "I'm glad at any rate that my figures tallied up all right."
"I don't want to seem inquisitive," said the older man, "but when did you get in the population examination?"
"There was some talk of my being accepted without going through the exam," said Hamilton, "because of the fact that I was doing census work of a more difficult character already, but I thought I would rather feel that everything had been done in the usual manner. I took the exam at New Haven, one afternoon."
"But are you going to do the population work there?"
"No, Mr. Burns," the boy explained. "The Director wrote to me that I would be allowed to send in a formal application in the regular way through the supervisor of the enumeration district to which I had asked to be assigned. The supervisor of that district had said beforehand that he would be willing to appoint me, as the section was so sparse that enough qualified enumerators were hard to get."
"Well, where are you going, then?"
"I don't know, for sure yet, of course," the boy explained, "whether everything will go through as planned, but if so, I shall be going to Kentucky."
"In the mountains where you had been visiting?"
"Oh, no," the boy answered, "in another part of the State entirely,—down toward the black belt of Kentucky."
"Kentucky isn't a black belt State," his friend objected.