“Well, good folks, how do you find yourselves this morning?” Little Jim gave a leap from his seat, opened the door, and let in Mrs. Smith, with a gush of fresh air, that seemed to set all the morning-glory bells to trembling with delight as they peeped into the room and tossed drops of dew over the window-sill. “There, now, that’s something like!” said the dame, gloating over the scene as if every living soul at the table were her own especial property. “Mercy on us! how we have all chirked up since last night. Well, Jimmy, what about the coal?” “Oh! I’m on hand!” answered the boy, pushing up the sleeves of his jacket. “That beef-steak has made me tough as an oak-knot and springy as a steel-trap. Just show me the thing that is to be done, and see if I don’t do it.” The good dame regarded the delicate child with infinite compassion, as he made his little boast. “Yes, yes,” she said, “you shall do anything you want to by-and-by, when good living has toughened you up. But just now we must give you light jobs, such as carrying home single parcels, and helping a little at the counter, maybe now and then—but you mightn’t like that?” “Like what? Why, Mrs. Smith, I’m just in for liking anything!” “But then you are so manly, and this is girls’ work.” A flush of scarlet came over that bright face, but it passed away in an instant; and holding up his arms, James asked the good woman if those hands and wrists were not slender and white as any girl’s. At this Mrs. Smith laughed till her sides shook, and declared that, boy or girl, he was a splendid little fellow as the sun ever shone on; and if Mrs. Laurence felt as if she could spare him he might come up to the grocery, and when there was no light jobs for him to do, there was the cradle to rock, and the baby to tend up stairs. Again the hot scarlet swept its way to the lad’s face, and a choking sense of shame rose to his throat; but he conquered the rebellious feelings like a hero, and protested, half crying, when he meant to laugh, that tending a baby must be prime fun, and rocking a cradle like rowing a boat. Just what he had wanted to do all his life. Besides, Mrs. Smith’s baby was such a first-class young one he wondered that any girl could be strong enough to hold her. “Then it is all settled, Jimmy, dear!” exclaimed the good wife. “Smith couldn’t make much of an opening for a little chap as had got to learn the business before he could be of any use; so Kate Gorman and I thought how handy it would be to have some one about the baby now and then, just for that, and running the fancy errands, as I call them,—John Smith don’t like lazy people about him, and we musn’t eat the bread of idleness, you know, James.” “I want to earn every mouthful of bread I eat,” said the boy, bravely, “and enough for others, too. If you’ll set me to washing dishes and peeling potatoes, I’ll try and do it well. See if I don’t.”