"Four dollars is the regular price for beginners; but there are good chances to advance if you attend to business."
This was evidently satisfactory to new number forty-eight, for he did as directed, and was soon busily engaged studying the tariff of prices, seated beside the fat boy who was now slumbering calmly.
For a short time Jet thought more about financial matters than of his lesson. Mammy Showers charged him a dollar and a half per week for a small room hardly larger than a cupboard, and two meals each day. He would now, providing he did not indulge in too many luxuries while traveling around the city, be able to save two dollars and a half every seven days, and it seemed very much as if he had fairly started on the highway to fortune.
"Well, if they call this work I'd like to have two or three jobs of the same kind." Jet said aloud when he was tired of studying the printed instructions. "I've been here a little more'n an hour, an' haven't been called off the bench once."
This remark appeared to arouse the fat boy to the consciousness of being alive, and on making great effort to sit upright, he noticed Jet for the first time.
"Hello! You're a new feller; I s'pose," he said with a yawn.
"Do you think I look very new?"
"You've jest com here to work, haven't you?"
"The way things look now I've come to set around an' keep the flies offer them young gents as has ter sleep forenoons."
"You'll be glad to do that same thing before you've worked here a week. It's dull now, but wait awhile, an' then see how the fellers have to hump themselves."