“But are you going to do the population work there?”

“No, Mr. Burns,” the boy explained.  “The Director wrote to me that I would be allowed to send in a formal application in the regular way through the supervisor of the enumeration district to which I had asked to be assigned.  The supervisor of that district had said beforehand that he would be willing to appoint me, as the section was so sparse that enough qualified enumerators were hard to get.”

“Well, where are you going, then?”

“I don’t know, for sure yet, of course,” the boy explained, “whether everything will go through as planned, but if so, I shall be going to Kentucky.”

“In the mountains where you had been visiting?”

“Oh, no,” the boy answered, “in another part of the State entirely,—­down toward the black belt of Kentucky.”

“Kentucky isn’t a black belt State,” his friend objected.

“No, Mr. Burns, but there are parts where the negroes are tolerably thickly settled.  The supervisor is a friend of my older brother, and he says that is an interesting part of the country.”

“But can a Board of Examiners in one district look over the papers for the supervisor of another district?”

“No, sir,” explained the boy, “but they can allow the examination to be taken before them and have the papers sent to the supervisor of the other district.  It was a little irregular, I suppose, but the Director knew all about it and it was for the good of the census, he thought, as he had been told there were not enough enumerators in the district to which I hoped to go.”

“Well,” the statistician replied, “if you’re headed for Kentucky I should think you’d like to see your folks before going.”

“I had planned to go up on Saturday afternoon,” Hamilton said.  “I can get to New York by evening and spend Saturday night and all day Sunday there, catching the midnight train back.  It brings me in early enough for office hours.”

“And this is Friday,” said the other thoughtfully.  “I’ll tell you what to do.  I can arrange for you to be off Saturday morning; it is only a half day, and you can catch the first train out after business hours to-day.”

“That would be bully!”

“I estimate,” the statistician said, rapidly dotting down some figures on a pad, “that the fractions of overtime you have worked recently, cumulatively considered, enable me to do that fairly, so that you’ve earned it.”

“That’s fine,” said Hamilton, “for the family is going to Europe for the summer, and I shouldn’t see any of them at all unless I ran up to New York now.”

The older man nodded his confirmation of the suggested arrangement, and returned to his figures.  During the noon hour Hamilton hurriedly packed a grip, and was back at the office without a minute lost, for he found a train leaving at a most advantageous hour, and by calling a taxi he was just able to catch it.