“I wish I knew somebody in Chicago,” said Joshua, whose inexperience as a traveler made him shrink from such a long journey.
“Oh, you’ll get along well enough!” said Sam. “Just try to find some cheap boarding house when you get out there, and then go around and look for a place in a store. Plenty of fellows make money there. When you’re a rich man you can come back East again. You can pay up the old man what you took from him, and that’ll make him all right.”
“Ye-es,” said Joshua, hesitatingly; “but it would be mean in him to take it, considering I am his only son.”
“You’d get it back again some time, you know; so what’s the odds?”
Though Mr. Drummond was far from being a model father, I by no means defend the disrespectful allusion to him as “the old man.” Many boys are thus disrespectful in speech who really respect and love their fathers; but, even then, the custom is offensive to good taste and good feeling, and is always to be condemned.
“You owe me some money, you know, Sam,” said Joshua. “Can’t you pay me before I go?”
“Certainly,” said Sam. “I’ll do it now, if you can change a five. I raised some money from a fellow that was owing me.”
So saying, he tendered Joshua a five-dollar bill from the hundred and sixty he had reserved as his commission, and the latter gave him back the change. This raised Joshua’s spirits somewhat, and enhanced his idea of Sam’s honesty, as he had begun to fear he should lose the money.
“Now, Joshua,” said Sam, tucking the money into his vest pocket, “you must come to the theatre with me this evening at my expense. I want your last evening in New York to be a jolly one.”
“Thank you,” said Joshua, graciously; “I’d like to go.”