remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair a
few moments after Harkutt had ridden away, "ye orter be bustlin' round,
dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man ef
you go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'the
Mill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy."

"I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he was
growned up either," responded John Milton, darkly.

"P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' his
father's customers," said Peters, angrily. "I kin tell ye, young man, if
you was my boy"--

"If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school,
jest as your boy is doin' now," interrupted John Milton, with a literal
recollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question that
morning.

An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usual
sequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself to
the youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.

The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis's
disappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone,
which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but which
either from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon,
were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference.
The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mist
that seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffled
over from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place of
another idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle around
the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came
occasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protracted
intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular
repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite side
of the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be more
luxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but not
equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and
a regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks got
well into a line for a laborious "march past" the store, but fell out
at the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectable
hen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her better
instincts, walked painfully on tipto