“No,” I said, as I stood looking up in deep admiration of his height and breadth and ruddy, wholesome face and generous Irish brogue.
“Well, that is hard luck,” he went on. “There isn’t many jobs ever at this season of the year, but just yous come around this way now and again, and I’ll tell yous, if I hears of anything.”
That was only a day or two before I found work, and when I had a chance to tell him of my success, his pleasure seemed as genuine as my own.
Sunday morning was all that Clark and I could wish. To the pallor of the earliest dawn was added a soft, white muffling of snow. It lay almost untracked over the filthy streets and upon the pavements, and in dainty cones it capped the fence-palings, and roofed in pure white the sheds and flat-cars in the railway station yard.
Clark and I walked rapidly across Wabash Avenue, then south to Twentieth Street, and then east again across Michigan and Indiana to Prairie Avenue. Here we were in the midst of a wealthy residence quarter. Most hopefully we wandered about in anxious waiting for some signs of life. From the first house at which we could apply we were turned away with the assurance that there was a man on the place whose duties included the cleaning of the pavements, and that, therefore, our services were not needed. We had expected this to be the case in the majority of instances; it was of the possible exception that we were in search. Soon we began to fear that there were no exceptions. Our spirits had fallen low under repeated refusals, when suddenly they rose with a bound, when we finally got a pavement to clean, and twenty-five cents each in payment.
The temptation to quit at once and get something to eat was strong, for the swallow of coffee and piece of bread at the station-house had not gone far toward satisfying an appetite which was of twenty-four hours’ growth. But then in another hour or two all further chance of work like this would be gone, and so we stuck at it. Our reward was almost instant.
Not only were we given a job at sweeping snow, and paid another quarter each for it, but we were asked whether we had breakfasted, and were invited to a meal in the kitchen. I think that the cook thoroughly enjoyed feeding us, we did such ample justice to her fare. After two large bowls of steaming porridge, we began on omelettes and beefsteak and crisp potatoes and fresh bread, drinking the while great quantities of coffee, not the flat, bitter, diluted wash of the cheap restaurants, but the hot, creamy, fragrant beverage which tones one for the day.