“George, I wish you wouldn’t try to talk about business to ministers. Old Wedgewell has just pestered me nearly to death; says you complain of having too much to do, and that you have to drink to keep up. It’ll be just like him to tell somebody else, and a pretty story that’ll be to go around about the chairman of a temperance meeting.” “I didn’t mean to say anything to him,” replied the clerk; “but he made me drop a shutter on my toes, and I guess that loosened my tongue a little. I didn’t tell him anything but the truth, though, Squire. I signed the pledge, last night, hoping you’d help me through.” “What--what do you mean, George?” asked the merchant, in a tone which defined the word “conservative” more clearly than lexicographer ever did. “I can’t work so many hours a day without drinking sometimes,” replied the clerk. “What I ask of you is to take a boy. If I could come in a couple of hours later every morning--and there’s next to nothing done in the first two hours of the day--I could have a decent amount of rest, not have to hurry so much, and wouldn’t break down so often, and have to go to whisky to be helped up again.” “A boy would have to be paid,” remarked the Squire in the tone he habitually used when making a penitential speech in class-meeting; “and here’s summer-time coming; there isn’t much business done in summer, you know.” “A boy won’t cost more than a dollar a week the first year,” replied the clerk, “and you’d make that out of the people who sometimes _have_ to go somewhere else and trade on days when you’re not here and I’m too busy to wait on them. There _isn’t_ so much money made in summer; but women come to the store then a good deal more than they do in the winter, and they take up an awful amount of time. Besides, the store has to be opened about two hours earlier every morning than it does in winter.” The merchant pinched his gloomy brow and reflected. Doughty looked at him without much hopefulness. The Squire’s heart might be all right, but his pocket-book was by far the more sensitive and controlling organ. At last the Squire said, “Well, if it’s for _your_ good that you want the boy, you ought to be willing to pay his salary. Besides----” “Excuse me, Squire Tomple,” interrupted Doughty; “’tisn’t for my good alone. ‘Accursed be he who putteth the bottle to his brother’s lips.’ I’ve heard you quote that to more than one man right in this store. That’s what you’re doing to me if you keep on. You sell half as much again as any other storekeeper in town, and why? Because I am smart enough to hold custom. I haven’t cared to do anything else. I’ve given myself up to making and holding custom for you, and I took to whisky to keep me up to my work.” “Well, haven’t I paid you for all you’ve done?” demanded the proprietor.