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      "The orchestra seats are high-priced. I thought you were short of money."

      "I was, but I am earning a good income now, and – "

      "You haven't got a place, have you?" ejaculated his cousin, in surprise.

      "Yes, I have."

      "Is it in a store?"

      "No; I am private secretary to a gentleman living at the Metropolitan Hotel."

      "Private secretary!" exclaimed Clarence, in continued surprise. "You can't be fit for such a position. How did you get it?"

      "I am not sure whether I shall suit," said Ben, "but the gentleman applied to me, and I accepted."

      "I never heard of anything so strange. How much pay do you get?"

      "Fifty dollars a month and board."

      "It can't be possible!"

      "That is what I say to myself," responded Ben, good-naturedly. "I am afraid that my employer will find out that he is paying me too much money."

      "Are you staying at the Metropolitan, too?"

      "Yes, for the present."

      "I will call on you before long."

      "Thank you."

      "My aristocratic cousin seems disposed to be very polite to me now," thought Ben. "I am glad I put him off the track about the arrest."

      "Excuse me," he said. "I believe the curtain is rising."

      "Who is that fine-looking boy you were just speaking to?" asked Percy Van Dyke, who came up at this moment.

      "It is a cousin of mine," answered Clarence, not unwillingly.

      "I should like to know what tailor he employs. He is finely dressed, and a handsome fellow, besides."

      "Of course, being a cousin of mine," said Clarence, with a smirk.

      "How does it happen I have never met your cousin before?"

      "He has only recently come to the city. He is staying at the Metropolitan just at present."

      Wonders will never cease. Here was Clarence Plantagenet Walton, the son of a wealthy merchant, actually acknowledging with complacency his relationship to a country cousin whom earlier in the day he had snubbed.

      He did not have another chance to speak to Ben that evening, as his cousin remained in his seat till the close of the performance, and in the throng at the close he lost sight of him.

      As he and his father were walking home, Clarence said:

      "I saw Ben in the lobby, between the acts."

      "What did he say?" asked the merchant, who was himself not without curiosity.

      "I must have been mistaken about his being in charge of a policeman," said Clarence.

      "I thought you were."

      "But the boy I saw looked precisely like Ben."

      "What did your cousin say?"

      "He has had a stroke of good luck. He has been engaged as private secretary to a gentleman staying at the Metropolitan Hotel."

      "Is this true, Clarence?"

      "So Ben says; and he says, also, that he is to receive fifty dollars a month."

      "He can't be fitted for any such position with his country education."

      "So I told him."

      "And what did he say?"

      "He agreed with me. He said he was afraid his employer would find out that he was paying him too much."

      "The boy is candid. If all this is true, he is strangely lucky."