"How does his mother feel, Mrs. Arling?"
"I'm just on my way there now," replied the lady-shopper; "give me a can of pork-and-beans, will you, John?"
The grocer, whom almost everyone in town called by his first name, climbed nimbly up the side of his store and fished out the desired article. Meanwhile Mrs. Arling winked at the old man and whispered:
"He looks like a boy, Grandpa, the way he scales that shelf; but he's past forty!"
"Aye, so he is, Mary; but you both seem like chits to me."
Grandpa Newman smiled when "Mary" had gone, then shook his head and sighed. The grocer proceeded to wheedle more news out of the village information bureau.
"Who's leaving us now, Dad?" he asked.
"Young Nelson; he's goin' away out here to Mt. Alban to j'in one of them banks."
"You don't say!"
"Yes," drawled the grandsire, "it beats the Old Scratch how these youngsters have got new-fangled idears into their heads. Now, when I was a boy—"