"Some might think him rather bold," said Jones, "but I don't. He is absorbed in his work, and he puts it through. He's the kind of boy we want, no doubt of that."
"See what he's up to, this morning!" said Mr. Gifford. "It's all right. He asked leave, and I told him he might go."
Jack had missed seeing the General because he did not know enough of the grocery business. He had said to Mr. Gifford:
"I think, Mr. Gifford, I ought to know more about this business from its very beginnings. If you'll let me, I'd like to see where we get supplies."
That meant a toilsome round among the great sugar refineries, on the Long Island side of the East River; and then another among the tea and coffee merchants and brokers, away down town, looking at samples of all sorts and finding out how cargoes were unloaded from ships and were bought and sold among the dealers. He brought to the store, that afternoon, before six o'clock, about forty samples of all kinds of grocery goods, all labeled with prices and places, and he was going on to talk about them when Mr. Gifford stopped him.
"There, Ogden," he said. "I know all about these myself,--but where did you find that coffee? I want some. And this tea?--It is two cents lower than I'm paying. Jones, he's found just the tea you and I were talking of--" and so he went on carefully examining the other samples, and out of them all there were seven different articles that Gifford & Company bought largely next day.
"Jones," said Mr. Gifford, when he came back from buying them, "they had our card in each place, and told me, 'Your Mr. Ogden was in here yesterday. We took him for a boy at first.'--I'm beginning to think there are some things that only that kind of boy can do. I'll just let him go ahead in his own way."
Mary had told Jack all about her daily experiences in her letters to him, and he said to himself more than once:
"Dudley Edwards must be a tip-top fellow. It's good of him to drive Mary over to Crofield and back every Saturday. And they have had such good sleighing all winter. I wish I could try some of it."
There was no going to Crofield for him. When Thanksgiving Day came, he could not afford it, and before the Christmas holidays Mr. Gifford told him: