"What do you want to know for?" he asked.
"I don"t know anybody here. I"d like to get acquainted."
The street boy regarded him attentively to see if he were in earnest, and answered, after a pause, "My name is Tim Brady. What"s yours?"
"Sam Barker."
"Where do you live?"
"Nowhere," said Sam. "I haven"t got any home, nor any money."
"That"s nothing!" said Tim. "No more have I."
"Haven"t you?" said Sam, surprised. "Then where are you going to sleep to-night?"
"I know an old wagon, up an alley, where I can sleep like a top."
"Aint you afraid of taking cold, sleeping out of doors?" asked Sam, who, poor as he had always been, had never been without a roof to cover him.
"Take cold!" repeated the boy, scornfully. "I aint a baby. I don"t take cold in the summer."
"I shouldn"t think you could sleep in a wagon."
"Oh, I can sleep anywhere," said Tim. "It makes no difference to me where I curl up."
"Is there room enough in the wagon for me?" asked Sam.
"Yes, unless some other chap gets ahead of us."
"May I go with you?"
"In course you can."
"Suppose we find somebody else ahead of us."
"Then we"ll go somewhere else. There"s plenty of places. I say, Johnny, haven"t you got no stamps at all?"
"Stamps!"
"Yes, money. Don"t you know what stamps is?"
"No. I spent my last cent for supper."
"If you"d got thirty cents we"d go to the theatre."
"What theatre?"
"The Old Bowery."
"Is it good?"
"You bet!"
"Then I wish I had money enough to go. I never went to the theatre in my life."
"You didn"t! Where was you raised?" said Tim, contemptuously.
"In the country."
"I thought so."
"They don"t have theatres in the country."
"Then I wouldn"t live there. It must be awful dull there."
"So it is," said Sam. "That"s why I ran away."
"Did you run away?" asked Tim, interested. "Was it from the old man?"
"It was from the man I worked for. He wanted me to work all the time, and I got tired of it."
"What sort of work was it?" asked Tim.
"It was on a farm. I had to hoe potatoes, split wood, and such things."
"I wouldn"t like it. It"s a good deal more jolly bein" in the city."
"If you"ve only got money enough to get along," added Sam.
"Oh, you can earn money."
"How?" asked Sam, eagerly.
"Different ways."
"How do you make a livin"?"
"Sometimes I black boots, sometimes I sell papers, then again, I smash baggage."
"What"s that?" asked Sam, bewildered.
"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Tim. "You"re from the country. I loaf round the depots and steamboat landin"s, and carry carpet-bags and such things for pay."
"Is that smashing baggage?"
"_To_ be sure."
"I could do that," said Sam, thoughtfully. "Can you make much that way?"