The clock in a nearby steeple showed Tom that there still remained nearly ten minutes of waiting, and so he joined the northward-bound throng and idled along the street, pausing now and then to examine the contents of a store window. A jeweller’s display held him for several minutes. He wondered whether he would ever be rich enough to possess one of the handsome gold watches so temptingly displayed on black velvet.

“They ain’t—aren’t—any thicker’n a buckwheat cake,” marvelled Tom. “Don’t seem as if there was room inside them for the wheels and things!” Just then he caught sight of himself in a mirror, took off his straw hat, and smoothed down a rebellious lock of red-brown hair. Then he replaced his hat, studied the result in the mirror, and nodded approvingly. A lady at the other side of the window smiled at the pantomime, and then, catching Tom’s glance in the mirror, smiled at Tom. Tom flushed and hurried away.

“Guess she thought I was a fool,” he muttered. “Standing there and primping like a girl!”

The lady followed his flight with kindly amusement, realising sympathetically his embarrassment. And as she went on she wondered about him a little. The reddish-brown hair and the clear, honest blue eyes had been attractive, and, although the tanned and much-freckled face could not have been called handsome, yet there was something about it, perhaps the expression of boyish confidence and candour, that lingered in her memory. Neatly, if inexpensively dressed, his attire had told her that he was not an Amesville boy, while a lack of awkwardness, a general air of self-dependence, seemed to preclude the idea of his being from the country. The problem lasted her only for a short distance and then Tom and the ingenuous incident at the window passed from her mind. But she and Tom were destined to meet again, although neither suspected it.

It was exactly half-past one when Tom entered the hardware store once more. On the occasion of his first visit the store had been empty of customers, but now at least half a dozen persons were there, and Mr. Cummings was busy. Tom found a position out of the way and waited. Besides Mr. Cummings, there were two others behind the counters—a tall youth who, as he passed with a customer in tow, looked curiously at the boy, and a small man with dark whiskers who, at his present distance, had a strong likeness to the gentleman who had left his purse in the lunch room. It was several minutes before Mr. Cummings was at leisure, but finally, dropping the change into the glove of a lady who had purchased a tack hammer and three papers of upholstery tacks, he beckoned Tom to the counter.

“Well,” he said, “I spoke to Mr. Wright about you, son, but he didn’t think we’d better hire anyone just yet. Maybe a month or so later, if you still want a job, we can take you on. Sorry I can’t do anything now.”

Tom’s face fell. He had been so certain since lunch that his troubles were over that the disappointment was deeper than it should have been.

“I’m sorry too, sir,” he said after a moment. “Well, I guess I’ll go on. I—I’m much obliged to you. You don’t happen to know of anyone who wants a boy, do you?”

“No, I don’t believe I do,” returned Mr. Cummings kindly. He kept step with Tom for a way as the latter moved toward the door. “You might try Miller and Tappen’s, though. That’s the dry-goods store up the street. They take new help on pretty often, I guess.”

“I’ve been there,” said Tom. “They said——”

“Joe, where have those three-inch brass hooks got to?” asked an impatient voice from the front of the store. “Funny we can’t keep anything in place here!”

“Ought to be right in front of you,” replied Mr. Cummings in patient tones. “Second shelf, Horace. No, second, I said. There! Got ’em?”

“Yes,” replied the dark-whiskered man irritably. “I’ve got them at last!”

It was the gentleman of the coin-purse. Tom recognised him as he went past. The junior partner was displaying the three-inch hooks to a man in overalls and glanced up in his quick, nervous manner at the boy. Then he looked again, and:

“Who’s that?” he asked sharply of Mr. Cummings.

“The boy I spoke to you about. Wants a job.”

“Call him back!”

Tom was just at the doorway when Mr. Cummings’s summons fell on his ear. He turned and retraced his steps. Mr. Cummings beckoned him to the counter where he had joined his partner. It was Mr. Wright who spoke, eying Tom searchingly.

“Aren’t you the boy who found my purse in the restaurant?” he demanded, almost fiercely.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mm.” Mr. Wright poked a finger through the scattered hooks on the counter. “You wait a minute.”

Tom drew aside. A glance at Mr. Cummings’s face showed him that the senior partner was quite as much in the dark as he was as to Mr. Wright’s conduct. But a minute later the customer in overalls went off with his hooks, and Mr. Wright, after returning the rest of them to a box and, as Tom saw with amusement, tossing it carelessly back to the wrong shelf, came from behind the counter.

“Mr. Cummings says you want employment,” he said questioningly. “What can you do?”

“Anything, sir. I ain’t afraid of work.”

“Going to school, are you?”

“Yes, sir. I start Monday at high school.”

“Do you know how to use a broom?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Wright drew his fingers nervously through his black whiskers. “Do, eh? That’s more than anybody else does around here.” Evidently that was intended as a hit at the tall clerk who had drawn near. But the clerk only grinned. “Well——” Mr. Wright turned to his partner. “Take him on if you want to,” he said. “He’s honest, anyway. That’s something. You talk to him.”

He hurried away to the front of the store. Mr. Cummings, with a smile and a quizzical shrug of his shoulders, beckoned Tom to the railed-off office at the rear of the store. There he told Tom to sit down.

“What’s this about a purse?” he inquired.

Tom told of the incident. Mr. Cummings seemed unduly impressed by it. “Now that was funny, wasn’t it? A regular coincidence, eh? Blessed if it don’t look to me as if luck had fixed everything up for you, son. Well, now I’ll tell you what we’re willing to do and you can say whether you want to do it. Your uncle owes this firm sixty-four dollars and a half. We’ll call it an even sixty. Now, we’ll take you on here to work at two and a half a week. Two of that goes to you and fifty cents of it comes to us until we’ve squared ourselves for that sixty dollars. That satisfactory to you?”

Tom considered a moment. Then, “Yes, sir, I think so,” he replied a little doubtfully.

“Well, if I were you, I’d talk to my uncle; tell him our offer and see if he wouldn’t be willing to make up the half-dollar to you. You’re paying his bill, you know.”

“Maybe he would.” But there was little conviction in Tom’s tone. “Anyway, if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, I guess. It would be all right if I could find a room for two dollars. I looked at one this morning, but the lady wanted two dollars and a half for it. Maybe I could find another, though.”

“I think you ought to,” said Mr. Cummings. “Try around Locust Street, near the depot. Well, there’s our offer, son, anyway. If you want to, you can have a talk with your uncle before you decide.”

“No, sir, thanks, I’ll—I’ll come, anyway.”

“All right. If you get on and learn the business, after a while we’ll give you more money. Mind you, though, you’ll have to show up here at seven-thirty, open up the store, and sweep and dust. And we’ll expect you back after school to stay until we close at six. On Saturdays we stay open until nine. And just before Christmas we keep open every evening. Let’s see; you said you wanted to get off early Saturday evenings, didn’t you?”

“I thought I’d like to spend Sundays at home, sir.”

“That would be all right usually, I guess. Around Christmas time we might want you to stay late on Saturdays, but other times I guess you could get off by eight or whenever your train goes. When do you want to start?”

“I was thinking I’d start Monday afternoon, sir. I’m going home to-day and coming back Monday morning, in time for school. Would that be all right?”

“Yes, that’ll do. To-day’s Thursday, isn’t it? All right, son. We’ll look for you Monday afternoon. You do your work right and I guess you’ll find us easy to get along with.” Mr. Cummings hesitated. “I might as well tell you, though, that—er—my partner is a little quick-tempered at times. It’s just his way. He’s terribly nervous. After you get used to him, you won’t mind it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all then, I guess. By the way, what did you tell me your name was?”

“Thomas Pollock, sir.”

“Miss Miller, just make a note of this, please. Thomas Pollock enters our employ Monday. Wages, two and a half a week. Enter him on the pay-roll. Thank you. By the way, son, you’d better have a pair of overalls here to slip on. There’ll be dirty jobs, I guess, and there’s no use spoiling your clothes. Good day.”

It was not yet two o’clock when Tom passed out of Cummings and Wright’s and his train did not leave until after four. That gave him a good two hours in which to seek a room within the limit of the two dollars which he was to actually receive. He had scant expectation of being able to persuade Uncle Israel to make good that fifty cents a week to him. Israel Bowles was considered a hard man around Derry, and, it seemed, his reputation had even spread to the city. Tom didn’t for a moment doubt that Uncle Israel really did honestly owe that sixty-odd dollars to the hardware house. Uncle Israel, however, probably had what seemed to him a perfectly legitimate reason for not paying it. And, as the indebtedness had remained for six years, Tom didn’t believe that Uncle Israel would agree to paying it off through him. Still, it would do no harm to ask, he told himself as he set off down Main Street.

Tom’s mother had died when he was a baby, and his father when he was nine years old. They had lived in Plaistow, a small Ohio town about a hundred miles from Derry. Before Tom, who was the only child, had been born his parents had had several homes, as he had learned from Uncle Israel. Uncle Israel called Tom’s father a “ne’er-do-well” and a “gallivanter.” Tom for a long time didn’t know what a “gallivanter” was, but he always resented the term as applied to his father. His parents, like Uncle Israel, who was his mother’s brother, had come originally from New Hampshire. When Tom’s father died, leaving little in the way of earthly goods, Uncle Israel had promptly claimed the boy and taken him to Derry. On the whole, Uncle Israel had been kind to Tom. The lad had had to work hard during the six years on the farm, had had to rise early and, often enough, go late to bed, since his schooling had been more or less intermittent, and it had been only by studying in the evenings that he had been able to keep up with his class in the little country schoolhouse. Tom couldn’t doubt that Uncle Israel was fond of him, even if displays of affection had been few. And Tom was honestly fond of Uncle Israel. He knew better than perhaps anyone else that, hard as his uncle seemed, there were some soft places, after all. But Tom didn’t deceive himself with false hopes about the fifty cents a week!

Main Street crossed the railroad tracks between the station and the freight houses. Parallel to the railroad ran Locust Street, lined on one side with small stores and lodging-houses affected by railroad employÉs. It was not an attractive part of the town, and the smoke from the engines and the dust raised by the wagons and drays that passed on their way to the freight houses made the fronts of the cheap, unlovely buildings dingy and dirty. But Tom knew he had no right to expect a great deal for two dollars and so began his search philosophically. There were plenty of rooms for rent in those three blocks, but most of them, after his own neat and clean little bedroom at the farm, turned him away in disgust. But at length he found what seemed to answer his purpose. It was a back room in a lodging-house even smaller and meaner-looking than usual, but it was clean and, within its limits, attractive. And the price was better than he had dared hope for. He could have it, said the stout Irishwoman who pantingly conducted him up the flight of steep, uncarpeted stairs, for a dollar and seventy-five cents a week, payable in advance. From the one small window there was a not unattractive view of a diminutive back-yard, which held a prosperous-looking elm tree, and the rear of a livery stable which, being only one story in height, allowed him to look over its flat tar-and-gravel roof to the more distant roofs and spires and trees of Amesville. Tom took the room, paid down fifty cents as earnest money, and agreed to pay the balance Monday morning. His landlady’s name, as she told him on the way downstairs, was Cleary, and her husband worked in the roundhouse. She referred to him as a “hostler,” but Tom didn’t see how a hostler could be employed about engines. He didn’t question her statement, however. She seemed a good-hearted, respectable woman. She had six other lodgers, she informed him, “all illigint tinants,” and proceeded to supply him with the life history of each. Two small children crept bashfully through the door of a back room and stared unblinkingly at Tom until their mother discovered their presence and sent them scurrying out of sight. “Me two youngest,” she explained proudly. “I’ve three more. One do be working for Miller and Tappen, drives a delivery cart, he does, and the next two do be in school. They’re good kiddies, the whole lot of ’em.”

Tom finally dragged himself away and crossed over to the station to kill time until his train left, on the whole very well satisfied with the results of his day’s industry.