"When Mr. Anderson gets back, he will find it necessary to employ you as assistant editor, for it won't do to let the paper get back to its former dulness."
"I will accept," said Harry, "if he makes the offer. I feel more and more that I must be an editor."
"You are certainly showing yourself competent for the position."
"I have only made a beginning," said our hero, modestly. "In time I think I could make a satisfactory paper."
One day, about two months after Mr. Anderson's departure, Ferguson and Harry were surprised, and not altogether agreeably, by the entrance of John Clapp and Luke Harrison. They looked far from prosperous. In fact, both of them were decidedly seedy. Going West had not effected an improvement in their fortunes.
"Is that you, Clapp?" asked Ferguson. "Where did you come from?"
"From St. Louis."
"Then you didn't feel inclined to stay there?"
"Not I. It's a beastly place. I came near starving."
Clapp would have found any place beastly where a fair day's work was required for fair wages, and my young readers in St. Louis, therefore, need not heed his disparaging remarks.