Mr. Hopper was drinking his tea and silently forming an estimate.  He concluded that young Brice was not the type to acquire the money which his father had lost.  And he reflected that Stephen must feel as strange in St. Louis as a cod might amongst the cat-fish in the Mississippi.  So the assistant manager of Carvel & Company resolved to indulge in the pleasure of patronizing the Bostonian.

“Callatin’ to go to work?” he asked him, as the boarders walked into the best room.

“Yes,” replied Stephen, taken aback.  And it may be said here that, if Mr. Hopper underestimated him, certainly he underestimated Mr. Hopper.

“It ain’t easy to get a job this Fall,” said Eliphalet, “St. Louis houses have felt the panic.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“What business was you callatin’ to grapple with?”

“Law,” said Stephen.

“Gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Hopper, “I want to know.”  In reality he was a bit chagrined, having pictured with some pleasure the Boston aristocrat going from store to store for a situation.  “You didn’t come here figurin’ on makin’ a pile, I guess.”

“A what?”

“A pile.”

Stephen looked down and over Mr. Hopper attentively.  He took in the blocky shoulders and the square head, and he pictured the little eyes at a vanishing-point in lines of a bargain.  Then humor blessed humor—­came to his rescue.  He had entered the race in the West, where all start equal.  He had come here, like this man who was succeeding, to make his living.  Would he succeed?

Mr. Hopper drew something out of his pocket, eyed Miss Crane, and bit off a corner.

“What office was you going into?” he asked genially.  Mr. Brice decided to answer that.

“Judge Whipple’s—­unless he has changed his mind.”  Eliphalet gave him a look more eloquent than words.

“Know the Judge?”

Silent laughter.

“If all the Fourth of Julys we’ve had was piled into one,” said Mr. Hopper, slowly and with conviction, “they wouldn’t be a circumstance to Silas Whipple when he gets mad.  My boss, Colonel Carvel, is the only man in town who’ll stand up to him.  I’ve seen ’em begin a quarrel in the store and carry it all the way up the street.  I callate you won’t stay with him a great while.”

CHAPTER IV

BLACK CATTLE

Later that evening Stephen Brice was sitting by the open windows in his mother’s room, looking on the street-lights below.

“Well, my dear,” asked the lady, at length, “what do you think of it all?”

“They are kind people,” he said.

“Yes, they are kind,” she assented, with a sigh.  “But they are not—­they are not from among our friends, Stephen.”

“I thought that one of our reasons for coming West, mother,” answered Stephen.

His mother looked pained.

“Stephen, how can you!  We came West in order that you might have more chance for the career to which you are entitled.  Our friends in Boston were more than good.”