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"Wait till you are used to handling money. I didn't come out here for a
bagatelle. My uncle wanted me to stay East and go in on the Mobile
custom house, work up the Washington end of it; he said there was a
fortune in it for a smart young fellow, but I preferred to take the
chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw
to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten
thousand?"
"
Why didn't you take it?" asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand
would have seemed wealth, before he started on this journey.
"
Take it? I'd rather operate on my own hook;" said Harry, in his most
airy manner.
A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made
the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman, whom they had frequently
seen before about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with. He
had the air of a man of business, and was evidently a person of
importance.
The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial
form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and
occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening,
he asked them to give him the time, and added:
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