“Well, I hope so,” answered the grocery man, “I try to do what is right, and hope to wear the golden crown when the time comes to close my books.”
“Then how is it that you put out a box of great big sweet potatoes, and when we order some, and they come to the table, they are little bits of things, not bigger than a radish? Do you expect to get to heaven on such small potatoes, when you use big ones for a sign?” asked the boy, as he took out a silk handkerchief and brushed a speck of dust off his nicely blacked shoes.
The grocery man blushed and said he did not mean to take any such advantage of his customers.
He said it must have been a mistake of the boy that delivers groceries.
“Then you must hire the boy to make mistakes, for it has been so every time we have had sweet potatoes for five years,” said the boy. “And about green corn. You have a few ears stripped down to show how nice and plump it is, and if we order a dozen ears there are only two that have got any corn on at all, and Pa and Ma gets them, and the rest of us have to chew cobs. Do you hope to wear a crown of glory on that kind of corn?”
“O, such things will happen,” said the grocery man with a laugh, “But don’t let’s talk about heaven. Let’s talk about the other place. How’s things over to your house? And say, what’s the matter with you. You are all dressed up, and have got a clean shirt on, and your shoes blacked, and I notice your pants are not raveled out so at the bottoms of the legs behind. You are not in love are you?”
“Well, I should smile,” said the boy, as he looked in a small mirror on the counter, covered with fly specks. “A girl got mashed on me, and Ma says it is good for a boy who hasn’t got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so I kind of tumbled to myself and she don’t go no where without I go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in love? Makes a fellow feel queer, don’t it? Well sir, the first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of the handles of a lectric battery, and you can’t let go till the man turns the knob. Honest, I was just as weak as a cat. I thought she had needles in her belt and was going to take my arm away, but it was just like it was glued on. I asked her if she felt that way too, and she said she used to, but it was nothing when you got used to it. That made me mad. But she is older than me and knows more about it. When I was going to leave her at the gate, she kissed me, and that was worse than putting my arm around her. By gosh, I trembled all over just like I had chills, but I was as warm as toast. She wouldn’t let go for much as a minute, and I was tired as though I had been carrying coal up stairs.”
“I didn’t want to go home at all, but she said it would be the best way for me to go home, and come again the next day, and the next morning I went to her house before any of them were up, and her Pa came out to let the cat in, and I asked him what time his girl got up, and he laffed and said I had got it bad, and that I had better go home and not be picked till I got ripe. Say, how much does it cost to get married?”