nger.

"Now let me turn the tables. How old are YOU, John?"

"You know. Eighteen next week."

"And how tall?"

"Five feet eleven inches and a half." And, rising, he exhibited to its
full advantage that very creditable altitude, more tall perhaps than
graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet quite
know what to do with his legs and arms. But he was--

I cannot describe what he was. I could not then. I only remember that
when I looked at him, and began jocularly "Imprimis," my heart came up
into my throat and choked me.

It was almost with sadness that I said, "Ah! David, you are quite a
young man now."

He smiled, of course only with pleasure, looking forward to the new
world into which he was going forth; the world into which, as I knew
well, I could never follow him.

"I am glad I look rather old for my years," said he, when, after a
pause, he had again flung himself down on the grass. "It tells well in
the tan-yard. People would be slow to trust a clerk who looked a mere
boy. Still, your father trusts me."

"He does, indeed. You need never have any doubt of that. It was only
yesterday he said to me that now he was no longer dissatisfied with
your working at all sorts of studies, in leisure hours, since it made
you none the worse man of business."

"No, I hope not, or I should be much ashamed. It would not be doing my
duty to myself any more than to my master, if I shirked his work for my
own. I am glad he does not complain now, Phineas."

"On the contrary; I think he intends to give you a rise this Midsummer.
But oh!" I cried, recurring to a thought which would often come when I
looked at the lad, though he always combated it so strongly, that I
often owned my prejudices were unjust: "how I wish you were something
better than a clerk in a tan-yard. I have a plan, John."

But what that plan was, was fated to remain unrevealed. Jael came to
us in the garden, looking very serious. She had been summoned, I knew,
to a long conference with her master the day before--the subject of
which she would not tell me, though she acknowledged it concerned
myself. Ever since she had followed me about, very softly, for her,
and called me more than once, as when I was a child, "my dear." She
now came with half-dolorous, half-angry looks, to summon me to an
interview with my father and Doctor Jessop.

I caught her parting mutterings, as she marched behind me: "Kill or
cure, inde