Away went Jim. He was certainly spry enough now. Mike was just setting the blazing match to the kindling when he reached the group around the stove. At the front stood the little boys, and in a twinkling Jim had pushed them one this way, one that, in order to stand directly in front of the stove himself. "There he goes again," sighed the widow. "'Tis a many pegs Jim will have to be took down, I'm thinkin'." CHAPTER XI It was the last day of August that Pat went walking down to do his marketing with a jubilant air. Next week school was to begin, and with the beginning of the term he had expected to go back to his old wages of a dollar a week. But that morning Mrs. Brady had told him that he was still to have two dollars. "And me goin' to school?" asked the boy in surprise. "Yes, Pat. You have come to be very skillful about the house and you are worth it." "I wasn't thinkin' about gettin' skillful, ma'am, so as to have my wages raised," was the earnest answer. "I was just thinkin' how to please you and doin' my best." Mrs. Brady was touched. "You have pleased me, Pat, and you have pleased Mr. Brady, too. We both take a great interest in you." "Do you, ma'am? Then that's better than havin' my wages raised, though it's glad of the raise I am, too, and thank you for it. 'Twill be great news to be takin' home the next time I go." But Pat was to take home greater news than that, though he did not know it as he went along with all the light-heartedness of his race. The sight of the tall, slender boy with his basket on his arm had grown familiar in the streets of Wennott. He was never left waiting in the stores now, and nothing but the best was ever offered him. Not only did the grocers know him, but the butchers, the poulterers, and even the dry goods merchants. For he often matched silks and wools for Mrs. Brady, and he had been known to buy towels of the common sort. A group of loafers shrugged their shoulders as he passed them this morning, and fell to repeating anecdotes of his shrewdness when certain dealers had tried to sell him poor goods at market prices. "There's nobody in this town ever got ahead of him yet on a deal," said one. "He's so awful honest." "Bein' square himself, he won't take nothin' but squareness from nobody, and while he's lookin' out for his own chances he looks out for the other fellow's, too. Times and times he's handed back nickels and dimes when change wasn't made straight," contributed a second. "There's two or three store men in town got their eye on him. They don't like to say nothin', seem' he's cookin' at General Brady's, but if he ever leaves there, he'll have pick and choice. Yes, sir, pick and choice," concluded a third. At that very moment a dry goods merchant of the west side of the square was in the bank talking to General Brady. "I might as well speak," Mr. Farnham had thought. "If I don't get him, somebody else will." What the loafers had said was true.