"Well, I'll be jiggered! It looks to me like as if you'd come down here tryin' to be awful too good. I wish I had money enough to buy a glass case to put you in. I reckon I could sell the lot up to the museum."
"That's right; laugh jest as much as you've a mind to, Carrots. You can't make me mad after all you've done; but what I said is true, jest the same, an' don't you forget it."
"All right," Carrots replied, placidly. "I reckon it won't cost very much till these're gone; so s'posin' we talk 'bout how we're going inter business? Skip's got it in for me now, an' I'll have to shin 'round as lively as you do."
"There's only one thing 'bout it. We must 'tend to work the same's if he wasn't livin'."
"But he'll jump down on us, an' then we'll get into another fight."
"I s'pose that's so. Ain't there some place in the town jest as good for paper-sellin' as 'round the City Hall?"
"Well, I don't know. You see, I've allers worked there, an' am 'quainted with the fellers, so it seems to me it's 'bout the only spot. If you should try down by South Ferry, or 'round here anywhere, everybody'd do their best to drive you out, same's Skip did. I b'long up to City Hall, so they can't shove me away from there; an' the bootblacks in any place else would raise a row if I come takin' trade away."
"It don't seem as though they'd dare to do such things," said Teddy, thoughtfully. "You've as much right on one street as another."
"That's the way I s'pose it looks to a stranger; but it ain't so, jest the same. Now if a new feller come where I was workin' I'd turn in with the others to drive him off, of course."
"Then how does a new boy like me start?"