“Yes, I’ll have a shine,” answered Barclay, thinking he might make this boy of service.

“So you don’t like Number 91?”

“No, I don’t,” was the emphatic reply.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He thinks himself above me, jest because he is a telegraph boy, and I am a bootblack.”

“Have you known him long?”

“Ever since he was so high,” said Tom, indicating the height of a boy of six.

“Do you know the old man he lives with?”

“Know old Jerry? Of course I do. Used to live in the same house, when dad was livin’.”