“Why not? You’re entitled to something. You ought to have a new suit of clothes at any rate—the best that can be bought.”
Jack was silent.
“Maybe you’re well off and don’t want nothing,” said the stoker, after giving the furnace a rake with a long iron implement.
“No, I’m not well off; but I don’t take money for such a service as that.”
“Well, you’re a curious kind of chap,” replied the man, scratching his head and looking the naked but well-formed lad over from his head down. “I’d take money mighty quick if ’twas me as done the trick. I s’pose you’re too proud, eh?”
“You don’t seem to understand,” said Jack, who wished the fellow would talk about something else.
“Say,” came a voice down the stoke-hole, “send up that young fellow as soon as his things are dried. The gal’s folks have been asking for him and want to see him bad.”
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH JACK GETS A JOB IN WALL STREET.
“What is your name, my boy?” asked the white-haired old gentleman who had accompanied the lady and the little girl on the ferryboat when, a little later, just before the boat was ready to start on her return trip across the river, Jack presented himself in his wrinkled and not thoroughly dried clothes before him in the waiting-room of the ferry-house.