"Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't here
to see ye, John," remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair a
few moments after Harkutt had ridden away, "ye orter be bustlin' round,
dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man ef
you go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'the
Mill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy."
"I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he was
growned up either," responded John Milton, darkly.
"P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' his
father's customers," said Peters, angrily. "I kin tell ye, young man, if
you was my boy"--
"If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school,
jest as your boy is doin' now," interrupted John Milton, with a literal
recollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question that
morning.
An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usual
sequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself to
the youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.
The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis's
disappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone,
which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but which
either from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon,
were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference.
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