"
"You're a good feller," said Dick, gratefully. "I wish you did live
in New York. I'd like to know somethin'. Whereabouts do you live?"
"About fifty miles off, in a town on the left bank of the Hudson.
I wish you'd come up and see me sometime. I would like to have you
come and stop two or three days."
"Honor bright?"
"I don't understand."
"Do you mean it?" asked Dick, incredulously.
"Of course I do. Why shouldn't I?"
"What would your folks say if they knowed you asked a boot-black to
visit you?"
"You are none the worse for being a boot-black, Dick."
"I aint used to genteel society," said Dick. "I shouldn't know how
to behave."
"Then I could show you. You won't be a boot-black all your life, you
know."
"No," said Dick; "I'm goin' to knock off when I get to be ninety."
"Before that, I hope," said Frank, smiling.
"I really wish I could get somethin' else to do," said Dick,
soberly. "I'd like to be a office boy, and learn business, and grow
up 'spectable."
"Why don't you try, and see if you can't get a place, Dick?"
"Who'd take Ragged Dick?"
"But you aint ragged now, Dick."
"No," said Dick; "I look a little better than I did in my Washington
coat and Louis Napoleon pants. But if I got in a office, they
wouldn't give me more'n three dollars a week, and I couldn't live
'spectable on that."
"No, I suppose not," said Frank, thoughtfully. "But you would get
more at the end of the first year.
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