"Honest Injun?" The joviality left Dick's face, though he tried to put it in his voice. His thin mouth was tightly drawn and the hard lines were accentuated about his deep blue eyes. "Honest Injun." Mr. Talbert was amused again. "But don't forget the secret. Always look out for yourself. Don't think about the other fellow, for if he's a good business man you can count on it he isn't thinking about you." "Listen!" Dick leaned forward. "I'm meaning what I say. I've got to get rich. It ain't for myself; it's for a girl, a girl that ought to have the best of everything in New York." For the first time during the meal he spoke in a low voice, but with an intensity that drove the smile from his companion's face. With elbows on the table, his head resting on his hands, he looked into the older man's eyes as though he hoped by searching long enough to learn the secret of success that he saw about him in this great city--the success that moved outside in silent limousines, that inhabited beautiful houses filled with skilled servants, that sent its women and children, now the warm weather advanced, into other beautiful houses by the sea. In the Sunday supplements of the great papers he had seen pictures of these homes and of the women who dwelt in them. There was not a face among the many that belonged more truly in such surroundings than the face that he looked into at his boarding-house table every day. And among the men who had won this success were some, he knew, who had started as poor as he. He asked only to be told their secret. Mr. Talbert did not smile at the mention of the girl as Dick feared he would. Instead he looked sympathetically at the long face before him. "A girl's a good thing to work for," he said. "It keeps a man thrifty and sober. I'm not an expert on getting rich, for such money as I have was mostly made by my father before me. But I take it if a man is young and strong and has an aptitude for his profession, he can still get what he wants in these United States. But he's got to want it more than anything else in the world, more than leisure or friends, more, perhaps, than honor. He's got to carry his work with him, study it in the evening, dream of it at night. He's got to live poor before he can live rich. He must be able to use men for his own aims. He must skin or he'll be skinned. See here, Mac," clutching at a man who was passing, "come and give your advice to youth." A large, comfortable looking gentleman stopped at his friend's bidding and looked quizzically at Dick as they were introduced. He would not sit down, and as the others were through their meal Talbert settled his account and they all stood for a moment together. "Have a cigar?" offering one to Dick. "I think I won't," Dick answered. "Perhaps that's one of the things to go slow on, eh, if I mean to succeed?" "Yes, when it comes to buying them yourself; but never refuse a gift," and his new acquaintance thrust the cigar into the young man's hand.