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thronging back upon thy memory." [Illustration] THE BOY IN THE BOX. BY HELEN C. BARNARD. "You haven't any more ambition than a snail, Joe Somerby!" said energetic Mrs. Somerby to her husband, as, with sleeves rolled to the elbow, she scoured the kitchen paint. Joe, who was smoking behind the stove, slowly removed his pipe to reply: "Wal, if I haint, I haint; and that's the end on 't!" "What would become of us if I was easy, too?" continued his spicy partner. "Why can't you have a little grit?" Joe puffed away silently. "Now, you pretend to carry on the rag business, you spend all your money a-buying and a-storing of 'em away; the back room's full, the attic's full, the barn's full,--I can't stir hand or foot for them rags! Why on earth don't you sell 'em?" "Waiting for 'em to rise, marm!" "Always a-waiting!" retorted Mrs. Somerby, thrusting her scrubbing-brush and pail into a closet, and slamming the door upon her finger. "Before you get through, the chance goes by. Joe," in a coaxing tone, "I've had a presentiment." Joe evinced no interest, but removed his pipe to say: "Now, wife, don't get uneasy. Let's be comfortable." "Yes, I feel a presentiment about those rags;" the little woman whisked into a chair beside her lord. "They say the paper manufacturers are giving a big price now, husband. Why can't you take a load to the city to-day? I've been thinking of it all the morning." "I'll do my own thinking, marm," said Joe, with dignity. He rose, however, and laid his pipe away. Mrs. Somerby said no more, sure that she had roused him from his torpid condition. She wound Joe up to the starting-point, just as she did her kitchen-clock, and he kept upon his course as steadily as that ancient time-piece. She was just the wife for ease-loving Joe, whom her brisk ways never wounded, for he knew her heart was full of tenderness for him. An hour later Joe drove into the yard. Mrs. Somerby flew out with a lump of sugar for a jaded-looking horse, bought by Joe to speculate upon, and who ate everything he could get, including his bedding, and never grew fat. "I'll make a trotter of him in a month, and sell him to some of the grandees!" Joe said, but his system failed or the material was poor,--old Jack slouched along as if each step was likely to be his last. But despite this, Jack had become very dear to the childless couple, and they were as blind as doating parents to his defec
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