“Come! Hurry up!” said the attendant. He wiped the table impatiently with his towel, and stood waiting for Lemuel and the other to finish. All the rest had gone. “Don't you be too fresh, pard,” said the mate, with the effect of standing upon his rights. “Guess if you was on your third bowl, you wouldn't hurry.” The attendant smiled. “Don't you want to lend us a hand with the dishes?” he asked. “Who's sick?” asked the other in his turn. “Johnny's got a day off.” The boy shook his head. “No; I couldn't. If it was a case of sickness, of course I'd do it. But I couldn't spare the time; I couldn't really. Why, I ought to be up on the Common now.” Lemuel had listened with a face of interest. “Don't you want to make half a dollar, young feller?” asked the attendant. “Yes, I do,” said Lemuel eagerly. “Know how to wash dishes?” “Yes,” answered the boy, not ashamed of his knowledge, as the boy of another civilisation might have been. Nothing more distinctly marks the rustic New England civilisation than the taming of its men to the performance of certain domestic offices elsewhere held dishonourably womanish. The boy learns not only to milk and to keep the milk cans clean, but to churn, to wash dishes, and to cook. “Come around here, then,” said the attendant, and Lemuel promptly obeyed. “Well, now,” said his mate, “that's right. I'd do it myself, if I had the time.” He pulled his soft wool hat out of his hip pocket. “Well, good morning, pards. I don't know as I shall see you again much before night.” Lemuel was lifting a large tray, heavy with empty broth-bowls. “What _time_ did you say it was, Jimmy?” “Seven o'clock.” “Well, I just got time to get there,” said the other, putting on his hat, and pushing out of the door. At the moment Lemuel was lifting his tray of empty broth-bowls, Mr. Sewell was waking for the early quarter-to-eight breakfast, which he thought it right to make--not perhaps as an example to his parishioners, most of whom had the leisure to lie later, but as a sacrifice, not too definite, to the lingering ideal of suffering. He could not work before breakfast--his delicate digestion forbade that--or he would have risen still earlier, and he employed the twenty minutes he had between his bath and his breakfast in skimming the morning paper.