In fact, Mrs. Smith was a kind, wholesome specimen of the middle class American housewife, and a good friend to the Laurence family. That was all. She had, when business grew prosperous, taken a lad from the street, rather more impulsively than we have seen her adopt our friend James, and believing herself to have met with success on that occasion, was the more willing to try a new experiment of mercy. But, like a good many other kind-hearted people, she forgot to guard herself against the infirmities of human jealousy, and was quite reckless of the fact that Jared Boyce received his fellow clerk with scowls of dissatisfaction, and that sneers of disdain curled his incipient red moustache, whenever the lad came near him.
This youth was left in charge of the store whenever Smith went out to make purchases, and his wife was called up stairs, which happened frequently, as time wore on, for Jerusha Maria was cutting her teeth in a vicious state of mind, and Kate Gorman had more than she could do in the kitchen.
Of course, this threw young James more frequently into the store, where Jared found occasion to impose all sorts of petty indignities upon him. These crafty annoyances the boy, too noble for complaint, bore with a degree of manliness that threatened to baffle the object his enemy had in view. One thing James saw clearly and felt, as only a proud, sensitive child could, Jared Boyce did not want him about. Why?
James asked himself this question again and again, with tears in his eyes, sometimes in the depths of the night, when a vague sense of trouble would keep him awake, sometimes when burdened with a heavy basket in the street; but he took counsel of no one, and bore his own trouble in silence like a little man as he was.
After awhile things changed somewhat with the lad. Jared cast off his morose bearing, and made some cringing advances toward cordiality, from which the boy shrunk with sensitive dread.
One day, when James had gone out with some packages, Smith came into the store in haste, while a countryman who had brought in a load of produce, waited at the counter with a whip in his hand.
“Thirty-seven dollars,” said Smith, opening the money drawer and counting some bank notes that he found there. “No need of waiting; generally enough on hand for small amounts like this. Ha, Boyce! who has been paying out money. I’m ten dollars short. Run up and ask the old woman if she’s taken any. If she has, tell her to shell out, the man is waiting!”
Boyce turned slowly, and went up stairs. He paused once or twice while ascending, and bit his white lips, as if doubtful what course to pursue. Then he lifted his head with a dash, ran the fingers of one hand through his fire-red hair, and flung open the door where Mrs. Smith was sitting with “Jerusha Maria” on her lap, rubbing her gums with the handle of a dessert-spoon, in the desperate hope that she was aiding a refractory tooth to cut.
“Mrs. Smith, the boss wants to know if you’ve took any money from out of the drawer. He wants to make up a bill.”
“What, me! Goodness gracious! What do I want of money, with Jerusha Maria crying her eyes out, and I trying my best to set her teeth of an edge. Tell Smith not to make a fool of himself, but search his own pockets. Dear me! will that man never have no consideration!”