“Yes.”
“It must be slow after being a popular favorite on the stage.”
“It will be, but I don’t want to be idle.”
“Perhaps you are right. I will be on the look-out for you, and if I find something more congenial I will inform you at once.”
Ben did find it slow work following his old business. He missed the nightly applause, and the pleasant consciousness that he was earning three times his necessary expenses.
But it was agreeable to think that he had some money in the savings bank to fall back upon. Mr. Snodgrass urged him to use a part of it, and even hinted that he should be glad to borrow ten dollars, but Ben knew the novelist too well to feel that it would be a safe investment.
It was about this time that a young man of twenty took an unoccupied room at Mrs. Robinson’s house. He professed to be earning twelve dollars a week in a counting house on Pearl Street as assistant bookkeeper.
He was dressed in quite a pretentious style, and had a large stock of flashy neckties. He had seen Ben on the stage at the People’s Theater, and this led him to cultivate his acquaintance.
“You must have saved up a lot of money while you were acting,” he said one day.
“A little, Mr. Grayson,” Ben admitted. “I have sixty dollars in the Union Dime Savings Bank.”