David smothered a sigh, but he stood quite tall. “I’ll do everything I can, Mr. Atkins,” he said.
“That’s right, an’ ef anythin’ extry comes up, you run into th’ house for Mis Atkins.”
“Yes, I will,” promised David, feeling sure that he would understand if he gave his whole mind to it.
“Well, I must be off,” cried the storekeeper with an eye to the old clock on the shelf above the cans of peas and beans, and the door slammed as he hurried into the house.
David stood still to draw a long breath and look around. He was actually left in charge of Mr. Atkins’ store!
For just one minute he couldn’t believe it, then the joyful truth rushed over him. He wanted to run over and practise writing on the slate just as he had been doing every day when there wasn’t anything that Mr. Atkins set as a task. But now to-day it was different.
“You dust down them shelves, Davie,” the storekeeper had said that very morning, “they look mortal bad, an’ old Mis Shaw kept starin’ ’em all over yest’day, an’ she looked ‘shif’less,’ though she didn’t say it, all th’ time she was in the store. An’ I’m afraid she’ll think everything dusty, jest because I hain’t had no time to move them pesky cans.”
So as dusting the shelves was the task set for him now, why he must keep at it. And David turned his back on the beloved slate lying on the counter with the slate pencil dangling off by its string.
“If I could only have a slate all my own,” said David to himself, as he began again on the lower shelf, patiently chasing every bit of dust from it, and moving each tin can carefully to one side. “Perhaps I will, some time.” He had finished that shelf and looked up to the next one. “I must get the step-ladder,” he said, “for Mr. Atkins told me to dust ’em all.”
And presently he was mounted up there, dust-cloth in hand, when a voice back of him called, “Hello—Hello, there!”