“Besides,” added Paul, “if you go out and stand in the street, your son will sooner or later find you out, and make trouble for you.”
“So he will, so he will,” chimed in the miser, with the old look of alarm on his face. “You are right, Paul, you are right. I must put it off. I—I wish he would go away somewhere—to—to California, or some place a great way off.”
Paul saw that he had produced the effect he intended upon the old man’s mind, and went out at once to look for a new room. He finally found one some half mile farther up town, in Ludlow Street—a little below Grand.
The room was better furnished than the one in which he and Jerry had lived for some years. There was a cheap carpet on the floor, a bed in one corner, and a shabby but comfortable lounge, on which Paul himself proposed to sleep. The rent was two dollars a month more than they had been accustomed to pay, but Paul concluded to say nothing of this to the old man, but quietly to pay it out of his own pocket. It would be but fifty cents a week, and he thought he could make that extra sum in some way. He was beginning to be more fastidious about his accommodations, now that he had seen how people lived uptown.
In fact, Paul was becoming ambitious. It was a very proper ambition, too. He had lived long enough in a squalid, miserable room, and now he meant to be better provided for.
“I am getting older,” he said to himself. “I ought to earn more money. I am sure I can somehow. I will keep my eyes open and see what I can find.”
Paul resolved to buy a bureau, if he could get one cheap, for at present he had absolutely no place in which to keep his small stock of clothing. He did not know exactly where the money was coming from, but he was hopeful, and had faith in himself. He was not waiting for something to turn up, as many lazy boys do, but he meant himself to turn up something.
Having concluded a bargain for the room, paying a dollar down, and promising to pay a further sum on Saturday night when he received his weekly pay, he returned to old Jerry.
“Well, Jerry,” he said cheerfully, “I’ve found a room.”