"Be at my house to-morrow afternoon, and we'll go over together," said Joel, with longing glances at the center of bustle around the molasses barrel.
"Oh, Grandpapa, how I do wish I could have staid and helped clean up!" Joel burst out, as they left the shop.
"Oh, my goodness, Joel!" exclaimed old Mr. King; "such a messy job! How can you!"
"It would have been such fun," mourned Joel, wishing he could have free access to just such a small grocer's shop, and thinking that Jack was the luckiest fellow alive.
"When I grow up, I'm going to have a shop like that," he declared, after marching on in silence down the next block and surveying with favor all the surroundings of the narrow street.
"I thought you were going to sell tin, like your Mr. Biggs, of Badgertown," said Mr. King mischievously.
Joel hung his head. "I was, but I think a shop would be nicer after all; you can have everything in it, you know, Grandpapa."
"Even molasses," put in Mr. King. "Well, I wouldn't decide the matter just now, Joel, my boy—which you will be when you are grown up. There's plenty of time yet ahead of you."
Jack Parish, with his hair carefully oiled by his anxious mother, and his very best clothes on, a circumstance calculated to invest him with dread and rob him of every bit of comfort to begin with, presented himself at Mr. King's mansion on the next afternoon. His countenance was long, and he looked so worried that Joel, rushing out to meet him, involuntarily ejaculated, "Oh, dear me!" in dismay.
After regarding each other uncomfortably for a minute, in which Jack began to wish himself, a thousand times, back in the little shop, Joel burst out, seizing his arm: