But Andy Lovell was tired of working without any heart in his work; and more tired of the constant fret and worry attendant upon a business in which his mind had ceased to feel interest. So he kept to his resolution, and went on with his arrangements for closing the shop. "What are you going to do?" asked a neighbor. "Do?" Andy looked, in some surprise, at his interrogator. "Yes. What are you going to do? A man in good health, at your time of life, can't be idle. Rust will eat him up." "Rust?" Andy looked slightly bewildered. "What's this?" asked the neighbor, taking something from Andy's counter. "An old knife," was the reply. "It dropped out of the window two or three months ago and was lost. I picked it up this morning." "It's in a sorry condition," said the neighbor. "Half eaten up with rust, and good for nothing." "And yet," replied the shoemaker, "there was better stuff in that knife, before it was lost, than in any other knife in the shop." "Better than in this?" And the neighbor lifted a clean, sharp-edged knife from Andy's cutting-board. "Worth two of it." "Which knife is oldest?" asked the neighbor. "I bought them at the same time." "And this has been in constant use?" "Yes." "While the other lay idle, and exposed to the rains and dews?" "And so has become rusted and good for nothing. Andy, my friend, just so rusted, and good for nothing as a man, are you in danger of becoming. Don't quit business; don't fall out of your place; don't pass from useful work into self-corroding idleness, You'll be miserable--miserable." The pertinence of this illustration struck the mind of Andy Lovell, and set him to thinking; and the more he thought, the more disturbed became his mental state. He had, as we have see, no longer any heart in his business. All that he desired was obtained--enough to live on comfortably; why, then, should he trouble himself with hard-to-please and ill-natured customers? This was one side of the question. The rusty knife suggested the other side. So there was conflict in his mind; but only a disturbing conflict. Reason acted too feebly on the side of these new-coming convictions. A desire to be at once, and to escape daily work and daily troubles, was stronger than any cold judgement of the case. "I'll find something to do," he said, within himself, and so pushed aside unpleasantly intruding thoughts. But Mrs. Lovell did not fail to observe, that since, her husband's determination to go out of business, he had become more irritable than before, and less at ease in every way.