[Illustration: He found a place in a quiet corner.]
"I didn't tell ma, though, that I was living out. I wrote to her that I was clerking--ten dollars a week. Ten dollars!--I'm looking for the girl that gets more than six. I don't know what the folks would have thought if they'd known of me a-being ordered around by a lot of young fellers--run and fetch and carry for a parcel of strangers. It don't come natural to me to be bossed, I can tell you."
"She did, for a fact. But it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted at all. So I told her I guessed I'd go. 'Well,' says she, sort of resigned like, 'if you've made up your mind to, you must, I s'pose'; she was sorry to lose me, I know. She walked to the-basement door with me to say good-by--with her specs on top of her head. 'Be a good girl,' says she, 'and let us hear from you'--'most exactly what ma said when I came away. Gray hair, just like ma's, too. 'Yes, ma'am,' says I. I didn't say 'ma'am' because I thought I was a servant--I wasn't; but because she was older and because I had a respect for her. And so I _shall_ let her hear from me; when I get along a little further I'm going to call on her. And I'm going to get along, let me tell you; I haven't jumped on to this hobby-horse of a town just to stay still."
"It broke her all up when you went away," she resumed. "She kept a-wondering for two or three days what the matter was. Poor soul, she's a good deal too tender for this town. What _was_ the matter?"
"Nothing. I had friends in a different part of the city."
"In a different part of the city," she repeated. She spread her palms far apart on the inner edge of the counter and brought her face down almost to a level with his. "D'you know, I always liked the way you talked; it's real genteel. And you say 'cahn't,' too. And 'dinnuh' and 'suppuh.' Hardly anybody says 'cahn't' around here--except actors. Say, I went the other night. It cost fifty cents; but I was just wild to see a real out-and-out city show--couldn't hold in any longer. They all talked kind of artificial, except one man. He had a bad part--erring son, sort o'. He talked right out in plain, every-day style, and he was about the only one I really cared for. Of course, though, I don't like bad men better than good ones. But your way is nice, after all."