He wanted to marry
the girl he had met at the station and did not see how he could manage it
on his salary as a carpenter's apprentice. When he looked back and saw Hugh
standing on the station platform, he took the arm he had put around the
girl's waist quickly away and began to talk. "I'll tell you what," he said
earnestly, "if things don't pretty soon get on the stir around here I'm
going to get out. I'll go over by Gibsonburg and get a job in the oil
fields, that's what I'll do. I got to have more money." He sighed heavily
and looked over the girl's head into the darkness. "They say that telegraph
fellow back there at the station is up to something," he ventured. "It's
all the talk. Birdie Spinks says he is an inventor; says George Pike told
him; says he is working all the time on new inventions to do things by
machinery; that his passing off as a telegraph operator is only a bluff.
Some think maybe he was sent here to see about starting a factory to make
one of his inventions, sent by rich men maybe in Cleveland or some other
place. Everybody says they'll bet there'll be factories here in Bidwell
before very long now. I wish I knew. I don't want to go away if I don't
have to, but I got to have more money. Ben Peeler won't never give me a
raise so I can get married or nothing. I wish I knew that fellow back there
so I could ask him what's up. They say he's smart.
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