I like to ride on the cars pretty well, and so does Mark. There are always such a heap of things to see out of the window, and such a lot of different kinds of people right on the cars. It was about four hours’ ride to the city, but it didn’t seem half that long, and I was sorry when we got there. It was pretty dark when we walked out of the depot into the street.

“Now what?” says I.

“B-bed,” says he.

“Where?” says I.

“Hotel,” says he.

“There’s one,” I says, pointing right across the street, so we took our satchels and went over. There was a fellow behind a counter, and when we came up he sort of grinned and says good evening.

“How much does it cost to sleep here?” says Mark.

“Two dollars and a half is our cheapest room.”

“For both of us?”

“I guess I can make it three and a half for two.”

“I g-guess you can’t,” says Mark. “The way I look at it, no two boys can do three d-d-dollars and a half worth of sleepin’ in one night. Hain’t there no cheaper places?”

“Lots of ’em, young man. There’s a tramps’ lodging-house down the street where you can stay for ten cents.”

“Um!... Well, I calc’late what we want is somethin’ betwixt and between. Somethin’ where we kin stay for about a dollar apiece.”

That seemed like an awful lot to spend just for sleeping. Why, in the morning our two dollars would be gone and we wouldn’t have anything to show for it. It seems like when you spend money you ought to git something. I nudged Mark and says to him that it was cheaper to stay awake, and we could use our dollars to-morrow to buy something we could touch. But he says we got to sleep to be fresh for business.

“I’ll tell you,” says the man behind the counter. “I’ve got a little room without a bath, and if you can sleep two in a bed, you can have it for two-fifty.”

“All r-right,” says Mark. “Kin we have breakfast here?”

“If you’ve got the money to pay for it.”

“Um!... But there’s places where we can git g-g-good grub cheaper ’n you sell it, hain’t there?”

“Why, yes! There’s a good serve-self lunch up the street where you can get a lot to eat for fifty cents. Say, what are you kids up to? Running away from home?”

“Not that you can n-notice,” says Mark. “We’re here on b-business. We come to see the p-president of that railroad across the street.”

“Oh,” says the man, and he laughed right out. “You come to see him, did you? Was he expecting you?”

“No.”

“Um!... Well, from all accounts, he’s a nice man to see—I guess not. They say he eats a couple of men for breakfast every morning. He keeps a baseball-bat on his desk, and hits everybody that comes to see him a lick over the head. I see him every little while, and, believe me, I’m glad I don’t have to mix in with him any. I expect he’s the grouchiest man in town.”

“Sorry to hear it,” says Mark, “but I guess we kin m-make out to git along with him s-somehow.”

“Want to go to your room?”

“Yes.”

Well, a boy with a uniform picked up our satchels and showed us into the elevator and then went into our room first and lighted the lights. Then he sort of stood around and eyed us like there was something he wanted to say, but he didn’t say a word. We looked at him right back, because we weren’t going to let on that we cared a rap what any kid with a uniform on did or said. Pretty soon Mark says:

“Well, was there anythin’ you was n-needin’?”

“Huh!” says the kid.

“What you hangin’ around for, anyhow?”

“I guess you hain’t traveled much,” says the boy.

“It hain’t p-p-part of your job to tell us, is it?”

“Did you ever hear of a tip?” says he.

“Tip?” says Mark.

“Most generally gentlemen gives us bell-boys a tip when we carry their bags to their room,” says he.

“Tip of what?” says I. “I hain’t got no tip unless it’s the tip of my nose.”

“A tip is money,” says the boy.

“We hired this here room for two dollars and a half, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” says he.

“We didn’t make no b-bargain with you about carryin’ satchels, nor with the man at the counter, did we?”

“No,” says he. “Nobody does. But everybody gives tips. You got to give tips.”

“Hain’t you p-paid wages for doin’ what you do?”

“Yes, but they hain’t enough.”

“Then,” says Mark, “you ought to make the hotel raise your pay and not go t-t-tryin’ to gouge it out of folks that stays here.”

“Everybody does it,” says the boy. “You can’t never git nothin’ done in a hotel if you don’t tip.”

“Do you git a tip every time you carry a satchel?”

“Yes.”

“Now you look here. I got an idee you’re tryin’ to git somethin’ out of us ’cause we’re kids and come from Wicksville. I’m g-g-goin’ to f-find out. If it’s the custom, why, I’ll give you a tip ’cause I want to do what’s right. But if you’re t-tryin’ to do us out of money, why, you won’t git it. I’m goin’ to ask the man behind the counter.”

And that’s what he done. He went right down and asked, and the man laughed like all-git-out and told Mark all about tips, and Mark told him what he thought about them, and then he give the boy a dime and we went to bed.

We went to sleep in a minute and it seemed like it wasn’t more than a minute before we was awake again. Mark woke up first and gouged me in the ribs till I woke up. Then we dressed.

“It’s f-five o’clock,” says Mark. “We want to git our breakfast and hustle. You kin bet a man with a big job on a r-r-railroad is down to work early. He’d have to be. Maybe we kin s-see the man we want about six o’clock and git an early train home.”

So we went to a serve-self place where you didn’t eat off of a table, but off of the arm of your chair, and we et quite a good deal and it was good. Then we came back to the railroad station and it was just six o’clock. There wasn’t many folks around, but we found a man in a uniform and Mark asked him who was boss of all the freight-cars. The man told him he guessed the general freight agent was, and Mark says, “Where’s his office?”

The man told him and Mark went there with me. It was shut up tight. We waited and kept on waiting, and in about an hour a man came along with overalls and a cap that said something on the front of it.

“Hey, mister!” says Mark. “We’re waitin’ to see the general freight agent. What’s the m-m-matter with him? Is he sick or somethin’?”

“Him!” says the man. “No, he hain’t sick. What makes you think he is?”

“’Cause he hain’t down to work.”

“Did you expect to see him at seven o’clock in the mornin’?”

“To be sure.”

“Well, you come back again about nine and maybe he’ll be here by that time. He usually gits around about nine.”

“Nine,” says Mark. “Why, that’s ’most n-noon.”

The man let out a laugh.

“How long does he work in the afternoon?” says Mark.

“Oh, he goes to lunch about one o’clock, and gets back around half past two, and then he sticks to the job maybe till four.”

“Honest?” says Mark.

“Honest,” says the man.

“Well, I’ll be dinged!” says Mark. “And they pay him a r-r-reg’lar day’s wages for that? Him workin’ maybe five hours a day?”

“If you got his salary, kid, you could buy a railroad for yourself.”

The man went along, and we kept on waiting, but Mark couldn’t get it out of his head how a man with an important job could hang onto it and do such a little mite of work. He said he guessed maybe he’d get him a job like that some day where he just had to work five hours. He said he’d do all that work in a stretch and then go out for dinner, and in the afternoon he would have him another job just like it, and work ten hours a day and make twice as much. I thought that was a pretty good idea myself.

It was all of nine o’clock when that man came, though there was folks working under him that came a little earlier. We kept asking if he was there until a man told us we was a doggone nuisance and that the boss wouldn’t see us, anyhow. And that’s just what happened. When he got there we asked if we could see him, and the man that was near the gate in the office asked what our business was, and we told him, and he said we couldn’t bother the boss with it. Mark said he guessed maybe the boss better be told we was there, anyhow, and after quite a lot of fuss the man went and told him, and then came back to say the boss was busy and couldn’t see us. He told us there wasn’t any use hanging around, because we wouldn’t ever get to see him.

That looked pretty bad, and Mar............