"How about Todd Pemberton, Frank?" asked the boy with the glasses.
"Well, you know him as well as I do, perhaps better," returned his cousin.
"I mean, wasn't there once something against him? I know, Frank, that my guardian signed a paper about getting Todd his position with the steamboat company this last spring; they always get him to sign everything going, he's so good-natured and what you call an Easy Mark."
"Yes, they came to my father too, and he put his name down, I remember. As near as I can say, it was a petition to ask the company to give Todd the position of pilot; and stated the belief of all those who signed that he would make good. He used to be a pilot on Lake Sunrise, and before that on one of the Great Lakes."
"But, Frank, why the petition, if he was able to fill the place you'd think all he had to do was to make application, and then jump in?"
"Well, it seemed to be pretty generally known about Bloomsbury that Todd had not always been as straight as he is today; and lots of people believed he would never hold his place a week; but he's had it all summer now, and seems to be giving satisfaction, all right," Frank went on to say.
"But there was a past, you mean; Todd had gone the pace, and used to drink and gamble, I suppose. Perhaps, now, he even used to herd with a tough set. How about that, Frank?"
"It's so all right. Todd got down pretty low, and was even a hobo, I heard, before he took a brace, and came back to Bloomsbury to make a man of himself again."
"Gee! I'm real sorry to hear that," Andy muttered.
"What? That he reformed?" demanded the cousin, in pretended surprise.