David jumped back as if shot, and put his hands behind him.
“Take it,” urged Mr. Simeon Jones, pushing the dime nearer.
“Mamsie wouldn’t like it,” was all that Davie could manage to say.
“Mamsie—who’s him?” demanded the farmer.
“She’s our mother,” said Davie, keeping his hands behind him.
“Saltpeter!” ejaculated Mr. Simeon Jones; “well then I s’pose you can’t take this ’ere dime, ef she wouldn’t like it, eh?”
“No,” said David, quite happy that he was at last understood.
“Well, I shall tell Atkins you’ve done fust-rate,” said the farmer, slouching to the door. Then he went out with another curious look at David, got into his big wagon and drove off.
Davie went back to the step-ladder, climbed up and wiped all the shelves. He wanted to sing, but that wasn’t the way, he was quite sure, to keep a grocery store. So he shut his lips tightly together, but his blue eyes shone as the dust-cloth went busily on its way into all the corners. At last it was all done, and every one of the tin cans of peas and beans in neat rows were in their places. Then he got down from the step-ladder and gazed at them all in great delight.
“Now I can practise my writing on the slate,” he cried joyfully. And scampering over to a barrel of sugar standing by the counter, he got on it, slate in hand, and fell to laboriously forming all the best letters that Polly had showed him how to make.