customary. Briefly, our fee is three dollars in advance. As for the boy, by a lucky chance, I have a very promising little fellow now in my eye—a very likely little fellow, indeed."
"Honest?"
"As the day is long. Might trust him with untold millions. Such, at least, were the marginal observations on the phrenological chart of his head, submitted to me by the mother."
"How old?"
"Just fifteen."
"Tall? Stout?"
"Uncommonly so, for his age, his mother remarked."
"Industrious ?"
"The busy bee."
The bachelor fell into a troubled reverie. At last, with much hesitancy, he spoke:
"Do you think now, candidly, that—I say candidly—candidly— could I have some small, limited—some faint, conditional degree of confidence in that boy? Candidly, now?"
"Candidly, you could."
"A sound boy? A good boy?"
"Never knew one more so."
The bachelor fell into another irresolute reverie; then said: "Well, now, you have suggested some rather new views of boys, and men, too. Upon those views in the concrete I at present decline to determine. Nevertheless, for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, I will try that boy. I don't think him an angel,
