his mother had once during his childhood, taken a flat. He well remembered having clandestinely traded jack-knives and buttons with him, in spite of the frequent warnings he had received to have nothing to do with him; for Gustav, with his broad freckled face and red hair, was looked upon by the genteel inhabitants of the upper flats as rather a disreputable character. He had once whipped the son of a colonel who had been impudent to him, and thrown a snow-ball at the head of a new-fledged lieutenant, which offenses he had duly expiated at a house of correction. Since that time he had vanished from Halfdan’s horizon. He had still the same broad freckled face, now covered with a lusty growth of coarse red beard, the same rebellious head of hair, which refused to yield to the subduing influences of the comb, the same plebeian hands and feet, and uncouth clumsiness of form. But his linen was irreproachable, and a certain dash in his manner, and the loud fashionableness of his attire, gave unmistakable evidences of prosperity.
“Come, Bjerk,” said he in a tone of good-fellowship, which was not without its sting to the idealistic republican, “you must take up a better business than selling yesterday’s `Tribune.’ That won’t pay here, you know. Come along to our office and I will see if something can’t be done for you.”
“But I should be sorry to give you trouble,” stammered Halfdan, whose native pride, even in his present wretchedness, protested against accepting a favor from one whom he had been wont to regard as his inferior.
“Nonsense, my boy. Hurry up, I haven’t much time to spare. The office is only two blocks from here. You don’t look as if you could afford to throw away a friendly offer.”
The last words suddenly roused Halfdan from his apathy; for he felt that they were true. A drowning man cannot afford to make nice distinctions—cannot afford to ask whether the helping hand that is extended to him be that of an equal or an inferior. So he swallowed his humiliation and threaded his way through the bewildering turmoil of Broadway, by the side of his officious friend.
They entered a large, elegantly furnished office, where clerks with sleek and severely apathetic countenances stood scribbling at their desks.
“You will have
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