:

"She's starting! I know I'm on the right boat, too. But I'm hungry
and I wish I had something to eat."

There was nothing to be had on board the boat, but, although hungry,
Jack could see enough to keep him from thinking about it.

"It's all city; and all wharves and houses and steeples,--every way you
look," he said. "I'm glad to have seen it from the outside, after all."

Jack stared, but did not say a word to anybody until the ferry-boat ran
into its dock.

"If I only had a piece of pie and a cup of coffee!" Jack was thinking,
as he walked along by the wharves, ashore. Then he caught sight of the
smallest restaurant he had ever seen. It was a hand-cart with an
awning over it, standing on a corner. A placard hanging from the
awning read:

"Clams, one cent apiece; coffee, five cents a cup."

"That's plain enough!" exclaimed Jack. "She can't put on a cent more
for anything."

A stout, black-eyed woman stood behind a kind of table, at the end of
the cart; and on the table there were bottles of vinegar and
pepper-sauce, some crackers, and a big tin coffee-heater.

[Illustration: _Coffee and clams._]

"Clams?" she repeated. "Half-dozen, on the shell? Coffee? All right."

"That's all I want, thank you," said Jack, and she at once filled a cup
from the coffee-urn and began to open shellfish for him.

"These are the smallest clams I ever saw," thought Jack; "but they're
good."

They seemed better and better as he went on eating; and the woman
willingly supplied them. He drank his coffee and ate crackers freely,
and he was just thinking that it was time for him to stop when the
black-eyed woman remarked, with an air of pride,

"Nice and fresh, ain't they? You seem to like them,--thirteen's a
dozen; seventeen cents."

"Have I swallowed a dozen already?" said Jack, looking at the pile of
shells. "Yes, ma'am, they're tiptop!"

After paying for his supper, there were only some coppers left, besides
four one-dollar bills, in his pocket-book.

"Which way's the Battery, ma'am?" Jack asked, as she began to open
clams for another customer.

"Back there a way. Keep straight on till you see it," she answered;
adding kindly, "It's like a little park; I didn't know you were from
the country."

"Pretty good supper, after all," he said. "Cheap, too; but my money's
leaking away! Well, it isn't dark yet. I must see all I can before I
go to the hotel."

He followed the woman's directions, and he w