“What’s hit you this mornin’, Bob?” said Tom Flannery, a companion newsboy.
“Why do you ask that?” returned Bob.
“Why, you look like you’d had a fit o’ sickness.”
“You’re ’bout right, for I don’t feel much like myself, no how. I didn’t get no sleep hardly at all, and I’ve worried myself thin—just see here,” and he pulled the waistband of his trousers out till there was nearly enough unoccupied space in the body of them to put in another boy of his size.
He couldn’t resist the opportunity for a joke, this comical lad, not even now. The trousers had been given to him by one of his customers, a man of good size. Bob had simply shortened up the legs, so naturally there was quite a quantity of superfluous cloth about his slim body.
“Gewhittaker!” exclaimed Tom, “I should think you have fell off! But say, Bob, what’s gone bad? What’s done it?” continued Tom, disposed to be serious.
“Well, you know the boy I told you about, what’s chummin’ with me?”
“Yes, the one I saw you with last night, I s’pose?”
“Yes, the same one. Well, he is lost.”
“Lost!” repeated Tom, incredulously.