“I’ll ask every one who comes into th’ store to-morrow, Jane, an’ somewhere’s there must be a boy wanted to do chores, I’ll be bound.”
“So do,” nodded his wife, and, delighted to see him more cheerful, she took a long draught from her black-looking tea, and switched off the conversation into more entertaining gossip.
But no matter how much Mr. Atkins pushed his inquiries among his customers to unearth the needs of a small boy to do chores in or around Badgertown, not only to-morrow but several days thereafter passed, and no one seemed ready to acknowledge any such need. At last the storekeeper was reduced to despair, and to cudgel his brains for some other plan to give timely assistance to a person who would not accept money.
At this moment, the rattle of wagon wheels and a sudden plunge as a long-suffering horse was brought to a quick stop by a loud and angry “Whoa!” proclaimed the arrival of a rich but by no means desirable customer.
“Now I suppose ‘Old Man Peters’ will want a pail o’ lard for nothin’,” muttered the storekeeper, his vexation noways alleviated by the sight of a customer who usually brought into his shop more plague than profit.
When the trifling matters of trade that always lengthened out by long dickering were at last brought to a conclusion, and Mr. Eli Peters buttoned up in his waistcoat pocket his wallet that had not suffered greatly in the business transaction, much to the storekeeper’s disgust, he paused, and said in a sharp high key, “You don’t know of a boy, d’ye, Atkins, that I can hire?”
“What kind of a boy?” demanded the storekeeper, irritably.
“Oh, a smart, likely one; he don’t need to be big. Ye don’t know of one, do ye?”
“I know a smart, likely boy as ever stepped,” said Mr. Atkins, determined not to give any names, “but I don’t know as he could do your work, Mr. Peters.”
Old Mr. Peters’s little ferret eyes gleamed. “Hey, well, who is’t?” He tapped on the floor with his stick that he always carried in the wagon to help his progress as soon as he stepped on the ground. “Who is’t? Come, speak up lively, I hain’t no time to lose; time’s money.”