"I am," answered Tom. "I've been a reporter only half an hour. In fact I'm not certain that I am one at all."
"How's that?" asked the senator, turning his magazine face down on the seat beside him.
And Tom told him. Told about his three weeks of dreary search for a position, of his interview with the city editor of the Evening World, and of the forlorn hope upon which he was entered. And when he had finished his story, Senator August was no longer frowning; the boy's tale had interested him.
"Well, he did put you up against a hard task; doesn't seem to me to have been quite fair. He knew that every reporter had failed and he must have known that you would fail as well. Seems to have been merely a neat way of getting rid of you. What do you think?"
Tom hesitated a moment.
"I don't think it was quite that. And, anyhow, I knew what I was doing, and so it was fair enough, I guess."
"But surely you had no idea of success?"
"I ought not to have," answered Tom hesitatingly, "but I'm afraid I did."
The senator looked out of the window and was silent for a moment while the express sped on through the afternoon sunlight. When he turned his face toward Tom again he was smiling.
"Well, you appear to have pluck, my lad, and that is pretty certain to land you somewhere in the end even if you miss it this time. I'm very sorry that I am obliged to be the means of destroying your chance with the World; but I have no choice in the matter, I——"