“It’s a queer world, and no mistake.”
Jim looked unusually grave, as he gave Johnny the benefit of these words of wisdom. Johnny was on his way home from school, and he had stopped to show Jim a certain knife, about which they had conversed a good deal, at various times. It had four blades, one of them a file-blade; it was strongly made, but pretty too, with a nice smooth white handle, and a little nickel plate on one side, for the fortunate owner’s name. They had first made its acquaintance from the outside of a shop-window, where it lay in a tray with about a dozen others of various kinds, all included in the wonderful statement,—
“Your choice for fifty cents!”
Johnny and Jim had both chosen immediately, but as Johnny, who was beginning to take an interest in politics, remarked, it was one thing to nominate a knife, and quite another to elect it! A slight difficulty lay in the way of their walking boldly into the store, and announcing their choice; neither of them had, at that precise moment, floating capital to the amount of fifty cents!
“And some fellow who has fifty cents will be sure to snap up such a bargain before the day’s over,” said Johnny, mournfully. “What fun it must be to be rich, Jim; just to walk into a store when you see anything you like, and say, ‘I’ll take that,’ without even stopping to ask how much it is.”
“Yes, it sounds as if it would be,” said Jim, “but though I can’t exactly say that I’m intimate with many of ’em, it does seem to me, looking at it from the outside, as it were, that they get less sugar for a cent than some of us ’umble sons of poverty do!”
And Jim winked in a manner which Johnny admired all the more because he was unable to imitate it.
“I don’t see how you can tell,” said Johnny, “and I think you must be mistaken, Jim.”