He decided not to do so, as he felt sure Barry could not pay him. The loss was not a serious one, but it would not do to make a second mistake. He paid his check and left the restaurant.
Jed knew very little of New York, even for a country boy. Some Scranton people doubtless had visited the great city, but, as an inmate of a poorhouse, he had not been thrown in their way. Accordingly he was like a mariner without a compass. He could only follow where impulse led.
He turned into Broadway, and with his gripsack in his hand walked up the great thoroughfare, looking in at shop windows as he strolled along. Travelling in this leisurely manner, it was perhaps four o'clock when he reached Union Square.
He was by this time fatigued and ready to rest on one of the benches which he found in the park. One person was sitting there already. It was a slender young man with a diamond ring on one of the fingers of his right hand. At least it looked to be a diamond.
He was dressed in rather a showy manner. He was perhaps twenty-two, but so slender that he must have weighed a dozen or fifteen pounds less than Jed, who was only sixteen. He looked casually at the country boy as the latter sat down, and presently turned and addressed him.
"It is a warm day," he said.
"Yes," answered Jed, who felt lonely and was glad to be social with some one.
"I judge from your bag," he glanced at the gripsack, "that you are a visitor to New York."
"Yes," answered Jed frankly. "I have never been in New York before."