"He ought to be a railway contractor. Brightest young fellow I've seen in a long time."
Jack felt strange. The old, grown-up feeling seemed to have been questioned out of him, by those keen, peremptory, clear-headed business men, and he appeared to himself to be a very small, green, poor, uneducated boy, who hardly knew where he was going next, or what he was going to do when he got there. "I don't know about that either," he said to himself, when he reached the office. "I know I'm going to bed, next, and I believe that I'll go to sleep when I get there!"
Weary, very weary, and almost blue, in spite of everything, was Jack Ogden that night, when he crept into bed.
"'Tisn't like that old cot in the Eagle office," he thought. "I'm glad it isn't to be paid for out of my nine dollars."
Jack was tired all over, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep.
He had gone to bed quite early, and he awoke with the first sunshine that came pouring into his room.
"It isn't time to get up," he said. "It'll be ever so long before breakfast, but I can't stay here in bed."
As he put on his coat something swung against his side, and he said:
"There! I'd forgotten that pamphlet. I'll see what's in it."
The excitement of getting to the Delavan House, and the dinner and the talk afterward, had driven the pamphlet out of his mind until then, but he opened it eagerly.