But this instead of gratifying the General appeared plainly to annoy him. "There now, you'd better run along and sell your papers," he remarked irritably. "If I give you a dime, will you quit bothering me?"
"I'd rather you'd give me a start, sir, as you promised."
"Good Lord! There you are again! Do you know the meaning of n-u-i-s-a-n-c-e, boy?"
"No, sir."
"Well, ask your teacher the next time you go to school."
"I don't go to school. I work."
"You work, eh? Well, look here, let's see. What do you want of me?"
"I thought you might tell me how to begin. I don't want to stay common."
For a moment his attention seemed fixed on a gold pencil which he had taken from his waistcoat pocket. Then opening his card-case he scribbled a line on a card and handed it to me. "If you choose you may take that to Bob Brackett at the Old Dominion Tobacco Works, on Twenty-fifth Street, near the river," he said, not unkindly. "If he happens to want a boy, he may give you a job; but remember, I don't promise you that he will want one,—and if he does, it isn't likely he'd make you president on the spot," he concluded, with a chuckle.
Waving a gesture of dismissal he started off at a hobble; then catching the eye of a lady in a passing carriage, he straightened himself, bowed with a gallant flourish of his wide-brimmed hat, and went on with a look of agony but a jaunty pace. As I turned, a minute later, to discover who could have wrought this startling change in the behaviour of the General, an open surrey, the bottom filled with a pink cloud of wild azaleas, stopped at the curbing before the grey house, and the faces of Miss Mitty and Sally shone upon me over the blossoms. The child was coloured like a flower from the sun and wind, and there was a soft dewy look about her flushed cheeks, and her very full red lips. At the corner of her mouth, near her square little chin, a tiny white scar showed like a dimple, giving to her lower lip when she laughed an expression of charming archness. I remember these things now—at the moment there was no room for them in my whirling thoughts.