In the course of a few weeks the boys commenced reading French, and found it quite interesting.
CHAPTER IX.
ROSWELL CRAWFORD AT HOME.
While Fosdick and Dick are devoting their evenings to study, under the guidance of Mr. Layton, we will direct the reader's attention to a young gentleman who considered himself infinitely superior in the social scale to either. Roswell Crawford could never forget that Dick had once been a boot-black, and looked upon it as an outrage that such a boy should be earning a salary of ten dollars a week, while he—a gentleman's son—was only paid four, which he regarded as a beggarly pittance. Roswell's father had once kept a small dry goods store on Broadway, but failed after being in business a little less than a year. This constituted his claim to gentility. After his failure, Mr. Crawford tried several kinds of business, without succeeding in any. His habits were not strictly temperate, and he had died two years previous. His wife hired a house in Clinton Place, and took boarders, barely succeeding in making both ends meet at the end of the year. The truth was that she was not a good manager, and preferred to talk of her gentility and former wealth to looking after the affairs of the household. She was very much like her son in this respect.
Among Mrs. Crawford's boarders was Mr. Gilbert, who is already known to the reader as the book-keeper of Rockwell & Cooper. It has been mentioned also that he was Roswell's cousin, being a son of Mrs. Crawford's only brother. He, too, was not unlike his aunt and cousin, and all three combined to hate and despise Dick, whom Mrs. Crawford saw fit to regard as her son's successful rival.
"How's the boot-black, Cousin James?" asked Roswell, on the evening succeeding that which Dick had passed at Mr. Rockwell's.
"Putting on airs worse than ever," replied Gilbert.
"Mr. Rockwell has a singular taste, to say the least," said Mrs. Crawford, "or he wouldn't hire a boy from the streets, and give him such extravagant wages. To pay such a vagabond ten dollars a week, when a boy of good family, like Roswell, can get but four, is perfectly ridiculous."
"I don't believe he gets so much," said Roswell. "It's only one of his big stories."