So long did Bob linger over the consumption of the modest repast he had ordered, that the waitress began to eye him with suspicion.  And finally she exclaimed: 

“Say! how long do you think you can stay here eating, or are you hoping that you will get a chance to sneak off without paying me?  But that game won’t work.  I’m too wise to get caught by any trick like that.  So just come across with the price of your feed.”

This caustic comment upon the length of time he was lingering over the meal, and the open charge that he was trying to defraud the waitress, hurt Bob, and his embarrassment was evident in the flush that mounted to his face, as he stammered: 

“I’m sorry if I’ve taken too long over my food.  I didn’t know I was expected to eat it all at once.  But I don’t think you have any right to say that I was trying to cheat you out of the pay.  If I hadn’t had the money in my pocket to pay for what I ordered, I shouldn’t have ordered anything.  How much is it, please?”

“Thirty cents,” snapped the waitress.

Quickly Bob thrust his hand in his pocket, and drew forth a dollar bill and gave it to her.

So deeply had Bob been stirred by the unjust reflection upon his honesty, that his misery was plainly visible on his face, and the waitress, returning, could not but notice it.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel bad, kid,” she apologized, “but you see, when people buy things in here, they generally pay for them right off, and we have so many tricks worked on us that we have to be pretty sly not to get nailed by some of them.  But you’re all right.  You’re only just green.”

Leaving the restaurant, Bob returned to the waiting-room, where he picked out a seat nearest the place where the train announcer always stood when he called out the trains that were ready for the passengers.  But as he sat there, he could not get the words of the girl in the restaurant out of his mind, and kept repeating to himself:  “Only just green.”

The constant brooding over this remark suggested the thought to him:  “If people here in the cities like New York and Chicago think that I don’t know anything, and am not used to the ways of doing things, what will they think of me out in Fairfax?  I said I wouldn’t let them take me for a tenderfoot, and I won’t.  I’ll just pretend I know all about things and watch how the other people do.”

This new resolve fascinated the boy, and he fell into a day dream, in which bronchos, cowboys, and herds of cattle figured prominently, and so engrossed did he become in it, that it was with a start he heard the train announcer call out the train for Kansas City and the West, which he was to take.

Following the others who were going on the same train, Bob made his way to the cars.

Mindful of his recent resolution and the unpleasant experience with the porter of the parlor car, Bob scrutinized each coach of the train carefully as he walked along until he came to one that was obviously a chair car, and this he entered, selecting a seat well in the middle.