“I don’t do business in that way, mister.”
“I believe you’re in league with him,” said the professor suspiciously.
“I dunno what that means,” returned the boy innocently. “Don’t you try your long words on me. If he was your boy, what made him run away from you?”
“Because he is a bad lot. He won’t obey me.”
“Ain’t he bad, though?” said the bootblack virtuously. “And you look like such a kind old man, too. He’d ought to be flogged, that he had.”
“I am not so very old,” said the professor quickly; for, like a good many others, he didn’t care to be considered aged.
“That so! You don’t look more’n sixty.”
“I am not near that,” said Puffer. “But that is of no importance. If you’ll help me you will find it for your advantage.”
“I’ll try. S’pose I do find him, where will I find you?”
The professor took out a card and wrote his address on it.