The job finished, Bridget and I sat on the pile, while he shared his lunch with me, and I waited for the Floater to bring me my fifty cents. When he appeared at last, I stood to attention, though Bridget nonchalantly kept his seat. I learned that if the little man was treated as an equal in the office he was treated as an equal in the basement. This circumstance gave to my politeness in standing up and saying "sir" a value to which he was susceptible, though too crusty to admit it. "There’s another load coming, sir, isn’t there?" I asked, humbly, after I had been paid. "What’s it to you if there is?" "Only that I might earn another fifty cents." "Earn another fifty cents! Why, fifty cents would pay you for two such jobs as the one you’ve done." "Then I’d like to work off what you’ve paid me by unloading the other lot for nothing." He lifted a warning finger as he turned to go up-stairs. "See here, young feller! You beat it. If I find you here when I come down again—" "You stay jist where y’are," Bridget warned me. "They’re awful short-handed above, and customers comin’ in by the shovelful. They’ve got to have four luggers to pull the stuff out for the salesmen to show, and there’s only six of us in all. When Clancy put the skids under hisself last night I could see how it ’d be to-day. It was a godsend to the little ould man when you blew in; but he always wants ye to think he can beat the game right out of his own hand." Thus encouraged I stood my ground, and when the next load came I had the privilege of helping Bridget to handle it. By the end of the day I had not only earned a dollar and a half but had been ordered by the Floater to turn up again next morning. "Ye’re all right now," Bridget said, complacently. "Ye’ve got the job so long as ye can hould it down. I’ll give ye the dope about that, and wan thing is always to trate him the way ye’ve trated him to-day. It’s what he wants of us other guys, and we’ve not got the trick o’ handin’ it out. Men like us, that’s used to a free country, don’t pass up no soft talk to no one. What’s your name?" I said it was Jasper Soames. "Sure that’s a hell of a name," he commented, simply. "The byes ’d never get round the like o’ that. Yer name ’ll be Brogan. Brogan was what we called the guy that was here before Clancy, and it done very well. All right, then, Brogan. Ye’ll have Clancy’s locker; and moind ye don’t punch the clock a minute later than siven in the mornin’, or that little ould divil ’ll be dancin’ round to fire ye." So Brogan I was at Messrs. Creed & Creed’s all through the next two years. *CHAPTER V* No lighter-hearted man than I trod the streets of New York that evening. I had breakfasted in the morning; I had shared Bridget’s cold meat and bread at midday; I could "blow myself in" to something to eat now, and then go happily to bed.