some day they'll be salesmen or managers or something--and they're in
very little danger of being fired. Do you think for a minute I could
step out of here into their boots and get fifteen dollars. No, sir."

"Why stick to clerical work then?" asked Evan, repeating a question
that had often been ineffectively put to him.

"What else can I do?"

Evan opened his mouth to advise, but closed it again in thought; and
the longer he thought the more thoughtful he became. Bill was right,
what could he do? He might dig drains, but where would that lead him?
Downward, certainly. Still, there must be positions in so large a city
as Toronto, for men who could fill them. He expressed himself to that
effect.

"The trouble is to find them," said Bill. "When a fellow works from
eight in the morning until ten or eleven at night, and usually on
Sunday, what chance has he to look around? I'm never out of here till
six o'clock, at the earliest. You can't run across a job through the
night, you know. We don't even get out for lunch."

"You don't!"

"No; we eat those ten-cent stomach-aches handed around in carts.
Occasionally we get a cockroach, to relieve the monotony; but not
often. Usually it's just common flies. Sometimes I have such pains in
my interior I have to double up on a stool and pray for relief."

Evan smiled wanly. Bill was a reckless talker, but he generally
managed to say something sensible every two or three sentences.

"How about stenography, Bill?"

"That's all right for a fellow of eighteen or nineteen, Evan, who can
afford to start in at ten dollars a week. But when a fellow of
twenty-three applies for a job like that they think there is something
wrong with him, and some kid of seventeen, fresh from business college,
steps in ahead of him.... By the way, why don't _you_ quit?"

Evan looked toward the street again.

"I haven't had time to think about it lately. I thought, when they
moved me here, that something would turn up in the city. That's one
reason why I was so glad to come."

"Well, don't fool yourself," said Watson. "Your work in Banfield will
look like kindergarten when you're here a week. And don't have any
idle dreams about studying shorthand and typewriting at night; you'll
kill yourself if you try it. It isn't possible where fellows work like
they have to in a city bank. I imagine they'll shove you on the cash
book, where I am now. If they do, good night!"

"Is it writ