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,” 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.