"Goin' to black boots? I'll show you how," said the other, generously overlooking all considerations of possible rivalry.
"I don't think I should like that very well," said Ben, slowly.
Having been brought up in a comfortable home, he had a prejudice in favor of clean hands and unsoiled clothes,—a prejudice of which his street life speedily cured him.
"I think I should rather sell papers, or go into a store," said Ben.
"You can't make so much money sellin' papers," said his new acquaintance. "Then you might get 'stuck'".
"What's that?" inquired Ben, innocently.
"Don't you know?" asked the boot-black, wonderingly. "Why, it's when you've got more papers than you can sell. That's what takes off the profits. I was a newsboy once; but it's too hard work for the money. There aint no chance of gettin' stuck on my business."
"It's rather a dirty business," said Ben, venturing to state his main objection, at the risk of offending. But Jerry Collins, for that was his name, was not very sensitive on this score.
"What's the odds?" he said, indifferently. "A feller gets used to it."
Ben looked at Jerry's begrimed hands, and clothes liberally marked with spots of blacking, and he felt that he was not quite ready to get used to appearing in public in this way. He was yet young in his street life. The time came when he ceased to be so particular.