work.

When he had performed for a little time this skilled labour for Trimble
Cushman it was brought to him one day that he was old indeed. For he
observed, delivering a box to Rapp Brothers, jewellery, that from the
sidewalk before that establishment he was being courted by a small boy;
a shy boy with bare feet and freckles who permanently exposed two front
teeth, and who followed the truck to the next place of delivery. Here,
when certain boxes had been left, he seated himself, as if
absentmindedly, upon the remote rear of the truck and was borne to
another stopping place. The truck's driver glanced back savagely at him,
but not too savagely; then pretended to ignore him.

The newcomer for an hour hung to the truck leechlike, without winning
further recognition. Then by insensible gradations, by standing on the
truck bed as it moved, by edging forward toward the high seat, by
silently helping with a weighty box, it seemed he had acquired the right
to mount to the high seat of honour itself. He did this without spoken
words, yet with an ingratiating manner. It was a manner that had been
used, ages back, by the lordly driver of the present truck, when he had
formed alliances with drivers of horse-drawn vehicles. He recognized it
as such and turned to regard the courtier with feigned austerity.

"Hello, kid!" he said, with permitting severity. But secretly he
rejoiced. Now he was really old.

* * * * *

Winona viewed the latest avocation of her charge with little enthusiasm.
It compelled a certain measure of her difficult respect, especially when
she beheld him worm his truck through crowded River Street with a
supreme disregard for the imminent catastrophe--which somehow never
ensued. But it lacked gentility. At twenty-eight Winona was not only
perfected in the grammar of morals, more than ever alert for infractions
of the merely social code, but her ideals of refinement and elegance had
become more demanding. She would have had the boy engage in a pursuit
that would require clean hands and smart apparel and bring him in
contact with people of the right sort. She stubbornly held out to him
the shining possibility that he might one day rise to the pinnacle of a
clerical post in the First National Bank.

True, he had never betrayed the faintest promise of qualifying for this
eminence, and his freely voiced preferences sweepingly excluded it from
the catalogue of occupations in which