“Well, I’ll be switched,” cried Roy, getting to his feet in indignation. “If that doesn’t beat the band. As though size had anything to do with a fellow’s ability. I just can’t believe it, Willie. Have you really _tried_ to get a place?” “Tried? Why, Roy, I’ve applied to every business man in Central City for a job. And they all tell me the same thing. They’re willing to hire me as an errand boy or to cut grass or weed onions, but not one of them wanted to give me a job worth anything.” “Did they tell you so? Are you sure you didn’t imagine all this?” “Absolutely. Why, old man Gulliver, who owns the big department store, told me flatly that he couldn’t afford to put me behind a counter because his customers would be offended by being waited upon by a boy. Nothing I could say would make him change his mind. He said the customers would judge by appearances.” “Why, Willie, those men are crazy. There isn’t a keener boy in Central City than you. Great guns! Those fellows know how the Wireless Patrol captured the German dynamiters at the Elk City reservoir, and they know that you were one of the four boys that Captain Hardy picked from the entire patrol, to track those fellows to their lair. What do you suppose Captain Hardy did that for, anyway? Your size certainly _was_ against you in that desperate business. And it was your brains alone that finally brought success to us. And everybody in Central City knows about our search here in New York during the war for the secret wireless. Great heavens! Does anybody suppose you would have been one of the four fellows selected for that job if you hadn’t had brains? Why, Willie, the Secret Service really owes it to you that they were able to find the secret wireless and nab the German spy who was operating it.” At the words Secret Service, Willie looked up. “There’s what I’d _like_ to do,” he said, “but I’ll never get a chance.” “What? Secret Service work?” “Yes.” “I can’t think of anybody I ever knew who is better qualified for that sort of work, Willie. You had us all skinned a mile when it came to tracking and trailing and observing things. The rest of us were a bunch of blind men alongside of you. Nothing ever was missed by you; and you never forgot anything you saw. And you almost always knew what things meant, too. We would all see something and the rest of us would stand looking at it like a set of wooden men, and you would tell us what it meant. Honest, Willie, those Central City business men are so stupid they’re funny.” “Maybe they are,” said Willie, ruefully, “but laughing at them won’t help me to get a job.” “Did you ever try to do any detective work in Central City?” “Of course I didn’t. You know how much chance there is to do that sort of thing in a little town like Central City. Why, people would have thought I was nutty for sure. They would have thought I had been reading dime novels.”