Chapter XII. The New Boarder - Page 2

rapidly calculated that there would be about twenty weeks for which he would receive pay before the six months expired, at the end of which the cow must be paid for. This would give him sixty dollars, of which he thought he should be able to save forty to send or carry to his father.

"How did you happen to come to me?" asked Mr. Leavitt, with some curiosity.

"I heard at the post office that your son was going to the city to work, and I thought I could get in here."

"Is your father living?"

"Yes, my father and mother both."

"What business is he in?"

"He is a farmer; but his farm is small, and not very profitable."

"So you thought you would leave home and try something else?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we will try you at shoemaking. Robert, you can teach him what you know about pegging."

"Come here," said Robert. "What is your name?"

"Harry Walton."

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"Did you ever work much?"

"Yes, on a farm."

"Do you think you'll like shoemaking better?"

"I don't know yet, but I think I shall. I like almost anything better than farming."

"And I like almost anything better than pegging. I began when I was only twelve years old, and I'm sick of it."

"What kind of store is it you are going into?"

"Dry goods. My uncle, Benjamin Streeter, mother's brother, keeps a dry goods store on Washington street. It'll be jolly living in the city."

"I don't know," said Harry thoughtfully. "I think I like a village just as well."

"What sort of a place is Granton, where you come from?"

"It's a farming town. There isn't any village at all."

"There isn't much going on here."

"There'll be more than in Granton. There's nothing to do there but to work on a farm."

"I shouldn't like that myself; but the city's the best of all"

"Can you make more money in a store than working in a shoe shop?"

"Not so much at first, but after you've got learned there's better chances. There's a clerk, that went from here ten years ago, that gets fifty dollars a week."

"Does he?" asked Harry, to whose rustic inexperience this seemed like an immense salary. "I didn't think any clerk ever got so much."

"They get it often if they are smart," said Robert.

Here he was wrong, however. Such cases are exceptional, and a city fry goods clerk, considering his higher rate of expense, is no better off than many country mechanics. But country boys