"Well, if I get it, I don't care if I don't earn it."
"That's true enough," said Gilbert, who did not in his heart set a very high estimate upon the services of his young cousin, and who, had the business been his own, would certainly not have engaged him at any price.
Roswell thought it best not to say any more, having on some previous occasions been greeted with remarks from his cousin which could not by any means be regarded as complimentary.
"Do you think I had better come in at ten o'clock, Cousin James?" inquired Roswell, as breakfast was over, and Gilbert prepared to go to the counting-room.
"Well, perhaps you may come a little earlier, say about half-past nine," said the book-keeper.
"All right," said Roswell.
Being rather sanguine, he made up his mind that he was going to have the place, and felt it difficult to keep his good fortune secret. Now, in the next house there lived a boy named Edward McLean, who was in a broker's office in Wall Street, at a salary of six dollars a week. Now, though Edward had never boasted of his good fortune, it used to disturb Roswell to think that his place and salary were so much superior to his own. He felt that it was much more respectable to be in a broker's office, independent of the salary, than to run around the city with heavy bundles. But if he could enter such an establishment as Rockwell & Cooper's, at a salary of ten dollars, he felt that he could look down with conscious superiority upon Edward McLean, with his six dollars a week.
He went over to his neighbor's, and found Edward just starting for Wall Street.
"How are you, Roswell?" said Edward.
"Pretty well. Are you going down to the office?"