"_Dieu vous garde, mon pauvre enfant._" The manager of the White Star even thought he heard a "_Bête!_" as the door was closed so decisively that one would almost say it was slammed. All of which the so unnatural parent endured with equanimity, and turned to his delayed files with a patient if dubious smile, for he had begun to do his parental duty as he saw it, and anything he began, whether it was a lockout, a new policy, or the training of his son, he saw through to the bitter end. The next morning, when the White Star manager reached his office--and he got there early, for he began his day's work when his office boy was still comfortably snoring---he found a small boy leaning against the door in the stiff and resigned position of a guard waiting to be relieved from duty. The only parts of him which moved were the toes of his bare legs, and these nimble members dibbled the clayey earth in front of the door-step. As soon as this apparition caught sight of Mr. Biron, it straightened up into life. "Kin I see you, Mr. Biron?" asked the boy eagerly, "on a matter o' business?" [Illustration: "'I CANNOT FIGHT THIS PEASANT--I AM A GENTLEMAN'" ] "Certainly," said the manager of the White Star, "just step into the office." The boy followed him in through the ground-glass door, shifted from one bare foot to the other, cleared his throat, then without further preliminary said: "Say--d' you want Andray Franswa licked to-day?" Then, fixing him with a bargaining eye, "I'll do it dandy fer seventy-five cents. I kin fight 'most as good as Jimmie--I uster be the biggest kid here before he come an' licked me," he added, with reminiscent pride in a past glory. Mr. Biron looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then said: "I engaged Jimmie for the first job, and he did it satisfactorily. I think there may be a tacit contract existing between us that I give him, at least, the refusal of the rest." "Nope," said the boy. "Jimmie, he ain't no pig. He told the bunch, 'You fellers go 'round an' see if yer kin git nuf for the circus what's comin'.' I bin waitin' a long time so's to be early nuf." "I see," said Mr. Biron, "Jimmie does not believe in monopolies. He is a despot, but an enlightened one." "Kin I have the job, then?" "Very well," said Mr. Biron, "I engage you to lick André François--but with this reservation--mind you do not hurt him, and I will pay you the standard rate of one dollar for a first-class job." This was the first but not the last of the manager's visitors. It was Saturday, and that whole morning the office of the White Star was besieged by applicants for a "job." Mr. Biron had his pick of the entire bellicose population of the town between the ages of nine and thirteen, and several more nefarious bargains were secretively struck in the shadow of the big iron safe, behind the discreet ground-glass door of the White Star office.