urney, had
gradually approached them. After a moment's timid hesitation he said,
looking at Grant: "You don't know anybody in this kind o' business,"
pointing to the instruments, "who'd like a boy, about my size?"

"I'm afraid not, J. M.," said Grant, cheerfully, without suspending his
operation. "The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work for
a boy of your size."

John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from one
leg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, "There
don't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. There
don't seem to be much use for 'em any way." This not bitterly, but
philosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejection
of any incivility.

"Really you quite pain me, John Milton," said Grant, looking up as he
tightened a buckle. "I never thought of it before, but you're right."

"Now," continued the boy slowly, "with girls it's just different. Girls
of my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy,--she's only two
years older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lie
about all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie,--who's
jest the same age, size, and weight as me,--maw and paw lets her do
everything she wants to. And so does everybody. And so would you."

"But you surely don't want to be like a girl?" said Grant, smiling.

It here occurred to John Milton's youthful but not illogical mind that
this was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his father
was to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, was
to-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involve
any pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change but
a simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected by
those customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return.
Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for other
reasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presence
of the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove,
and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which he
might have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dull
gossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel and
instruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments.
"Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't here
to see ye, John,"