n the sidewalk, and scooped up the beans, occasionally
looking over to the drug store, and just as he got them picked up, the
boy came out of the drug store and walked deliberately towards his home
as though there was no particular hurry. The grocery man looked after
him, took up an ax-handle, spit on his hands, and shouted to the boy to
come over pretty soon, as he wanted to talk with him. The boy did not
come to the grocery till towards night; but the grocery man had seen him
running down town a dozen times during the day and once he rode up to
the house with the doctor, and the grocer surmised what was the trouble.
Along towards night the boy came in in a dejected sort of a tired way,
sat down on a barrel of sugar, and never spoke.

"What is it, a boy or girl," said the grocery man, winking at an old
lady with a shawl over her head, who was trying to hold a paper over a
pitcher of yeast with her thumb.

"How in blazes did you know anything about it?" said the boy, as he
looked around in astonishment, and with some indignation. "Well, it's
a girl, if you must know, and that's enough," and he looked down at the
cat playing on the floor with a potato, his face a picture of dejection.

"O, don't feel bad about it," said the grocery man, as he opened the
door for the old lady. "Such things are bound to occur; but you take my
word for it, that young one is going to have a hard life unless you mend
your ways. You will be using it for a cork to a jug, or to wad a gun
with, the first thing your Ma knows."

"I wouldn't touch the darn thing with the tongs," said the boy, as
he rallied enough to eat some crackers and cheese. "Gosh, this cheese
tastes good. I hain't had noth-to eat since morning. I have been all
over this town trolling for nurses. They think a boy hasn't got any
feelings. But I wouldn't care a goldarn, if Ma hadn't been sending me
for neuralgia medicine, and hay fever stuff all winter, when she wanted
to get rid of me. I have come into the room lots of times when Ma and
the sewing girl were at work on some flannel things, and Ma would hide
them in a basket and send me off after medicine. I was deceived up to
about four o clock this morning, when Pa come to my room and pulled me
out of bed to go over on the West Side after some old woman that knew
Ma, and they have kept me whooping ever since. What does a boy want of
a sister, unless it is a big sister. I don't want no sister that I have
got to hold, and rock,