"Never saw such a fellow!" grumbled his companion utility boy. "You'd think he run the store by the way he steps round with his head up and them sharp eyes of his into everything. 'Hi there!' he said to me. 'Fill that measure of gasoline full before you pour it into the can. Mr. Dale doesn't want the name of giving short measure because you are careless.' Let's do some reporting on him, and get him out of the store," he said. "But there's nothing to report, and there never will be."
But the boy persisted, and very shortly he found himself out of a position.
"You needn't get another boy if you don't want to, Mr. Dale," observed Elnathan, cheerily. "I am so used to the place now that I can do all he did, as well as my own work. And, anyway, I would rather do the extra work than go on watching somebody to keep him from measuring up short or wrong grade on everything he touches." And Elnathan smiled. He had lately discovered that he had ceased to hate work.
Mr. Dale smiled in return. "Very well," he said. "Go ahead and do it all if you want to."
A week he went ahead, and at the end of that time he found, to his delight, that Mr. Dale had increased his wages. "Did you think I would take the work of two boys and pay for the work of one?" asked Mr. Dale.
"I didn't think at all, sir," replied Elnathan, joyously; "but I am the gladdest boy in Kingston to get a raise."
"Uncle Chris," he said that night, "I got a raise today."
Mr. Lightenhome expressed his pleasure, and his sense that the honor was well merited, but Elnathan did not hear a word he said, because he had something more to say himself.
"Uncle Chris," he went on, his face very red, "I have been saving up for some time, and tomorrow's your birthday. Here is a present for you." And he thrust out a ten-dollar piece, with the words, "I never made a present before."
Slowly the old man took the money, and again his eyes outdid his tongue in speaking his gratitude. And there was a great glow in the heart of the boy.