"I am willing to admit my ignorance," rejoined Peveril, "but I am also very anxious to learn things, and hope in course of time to rank as a first-class miner. Therefore, any information you can give me will be gratefully received. To begin with, I wish you would tell me the name of some hotel where my grip will serve as security for a few days' board and lodging."
"A hotel, Mr. Peril! You can't be feeling so very poor if you are thinking of going to a hotel. Or perhaps you don't know how expensive our Red Jacket hotels are. You see, there is always such a rush of business here that prices are way up. Why, they don't think anything of charging two dollars a day; and they get it, too—don't give you anything extra in the way of grub, either. I can do lots better than that for you, though. There's a-plenty of boarding-houses here that'll fix you up in great shape for five a week. You just wait here at the station a few minutes while I go and look up one that I know of."
Without waiting for a reply Tom Trefethen hurried from the train, which was just coming to a stop at the bustling Red Jacket station, and disappeared in the crowd of spectators who had gathered to witness its arrival. Peveril followed more slowly, and, depositing the handsome dress-suit case that he had learned to call a "grip" in a vacant corner of the platform, prepared to await the return of his only acquaintance in all that community, "or in the whole State of Michigan, so far as I know," reflected the young man.
"As for friends, I wonder if I have any anywhere. This Tom Trefethen claims to have a friendly feeling towards me, and, if he comes back, I will try to believe in him. It is more than likely though that his leaving me here is only a way of escaping an irksome obligation, and I shouldn't be one bit surprised never to see him again. It seems to be the way of the world, that if you place a fellow under an obligation he begins to dislike you from that moment. My! if all the fellows whom I have helped would only pay what they owe me, how well fixed I should be at this minute. I could even put up with a clear conscience at one of Tom Trefethen's two-dollar-a-day hotels. What an unsophisticated chap he is, anyway. Wonder what he would say to the Waldorf charges? And yet only a short time ago I thought them very moderate. It's a queer old world, and a fellow has to see all sides of it before he can form an idea of what it is really like. I must confess, however, that I am not particularly enjoying my present point of view. Must be because I am so infernally hungry. Odd sensation, and so decidedly unpleasant that if my friend with the Cornish name doesn't return inside of two minutes more I shall abandon our tryst and set forth in search of a supper."
At this point in his dismal reflections Peveril became aware of a short, solidly built man, having a grizzled beard, and wearing a rough suit of ill-fitting clothing, who was standing squarely before him and regarding him intently. As their eyes met, the new-comer asked, abruptly:
"Be thy name Richard, lad?"
"Yes."
"What's t'other part of it?"
"Peveril. And may I inquire why you ask?"