He had just left school and was looking for work when there was talk of the coming paper. But it did not occur to him at first that it would have anything so wonderful as a job for a boy.
He was fishing off the station wharf when one of his school friends told him he had just heard a boy was wanted for it. He jumped up, left his line and bait, and ran along the river to the office where two men were unloading the new jobbing machine. He was told the boss had gone to lunch. He ran all the way to Mac’s hotel, stopped panting in the hall, hesitated a moment about storming the dining-room, but bursting with anxiety lest he be too late he stuck his head in at the door. He saw Bob Lorrimer eating alone, quite unconscious of the portentous power he seemed, and got a fit of horrid funk, but conquering it as he did Red Indians in his dreams, he strode hot and grubby and fishy to Bob’s table, and stood nervously twisting his cap in his hands. He was sick with shame at feeling the eyes of the room upon him, and humiliated by the sight of his filthy fingers, but still something supported him in that dreadful moment.
“Please, sir,” he began miserably, as Bob looked at him.
“Well, son, what do you want?” asked the arbiter of fate quite amiably.
“Please, sir, I heard you want a boy, a boy for the paper.”
Jimmy ached to sink into the earth as Bob covered him with a shrewd glance. He could not know that the man was immediately prepossessed in his favour.
Jimmy was a short stocky boy with very bright brown eyes and bronze-tinted hair. Usually his round face shone with some secret amusement of his own at the world about him, an amusement curiously mingled with the solicitude he had acquired from helping a tired mother and keeping a
