“Are there? Well, you jest bet there are. I’ve seen more’n two hundred boys after a place, and ’twan’t nothin’ extra of a place, either.”
“But then there are thousands of places to be filled. Why, the papers were full of them.”
“Yes, and there is a good many more thousands what wants them same jobs. You never thought of that, I guess.”
Herbert admitted with flushed cheeks that he had not given that fact proper consideration.
“Well, you done well, any way, to hang on so long,” said Bob, in his off hand, comical manner. “I expected you’d get sick before this time, and steer straight for Vermont.”
“Why did you think that?”
the country boy to the rescue.
“Well, most of the country boys think they can pick up money on the streets in New York; but when they get here, and begin to hunt for it, they tumble rather spry—I mean they find they’ve been took in, and that a fellow has got to work harder, yes, I’d say so, ten times harder, here’n he does on a farm. There he can just sleep and laze round in the sun, and go in swimmin’, and all the time the stuff is just growin’ and whoopin’ her right along, like as if I was boss of a dozen boys, and they was all sellin’ papers and I was makin’ a profit on ’em all, and wasn’t doin’ nothin’ myself. So when these fellers find out they’ve got to knuckle down and shine shoes, why they just light out kinder lively, and make up their minds that New York ain’t much of a town no how.”